The Darkest Mark
by Feronia
Summary: Ch. Will the Ravenous Chair ever give up its victim? Mr. Borgin of Borgin and Burke's is here to answer that question, even if the three free Death Eaters have to do a little persuading first.
1. Snape Takes a Drink

Author's Note: This is the revised version of chapter 1. If you have just found this story, I urge you to read! This is one of those "how it all happened" Snape fics, but hopefully with a few good, original ideas. Mainly, the idea is to focus on the development of Snape and fellow Death Eaters Lucius Malfoy, Augustus Rookwood, and Igor Karkaroff. So read on if you wish to hear about Severus Snape, a certain snake-faced beast-man, an unpleasant initiation, an encounter with a Ravenous Chair, and the interactions between four recent graduates of Hogwarts in their roles as Death Eaters. As if you didn't know, but I apparently have to say this: All of this stuff, all the ideas, are not mine; they're basically JK Rowling's and anyone who she's sold the rights to. Ok; now read, and please review.  
  
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Snape was a hard man, and probably a bad man, but without a doubt, definitely, a hard man. He was more than just a soft, pink human being encased in protective armor: he was stone. When he was small he had cried when his father snarled at him, but when he had grown into a young man who could think for himself—then he had stared back at that beast of a man with such scaldingly cold hatred that it incised a mark of fear into his father's mind; but it burnt Snape through a little bit each time he used it. After a while, there was little remaining but scar tissue.  
  
He had been a very intelligent boy, with an obvious skill in the brewing of potions, an unnerving talent for the Dark Arts, and a brutally precise wand- arm. He could have accomplished anything, if it were not for that look in his eyes. He could not be made nervous, nor ever ashamed. His teachers whispered in the lounge as they gulped down their Irish coffee that Severus Snape had but two emotions: cold anger and smug satisfaction. But they only talked about Snape when they had exhausted themselves with laughing at the latest high jinks of James Potter and his friends, or when they had run out of Potter achievements to which they could shake their heads and say "he will go far in life." Their only hope for Snape was that he would hurry up and graduate so they could get back to teaching students who'd actually blink their eyes once or twice in the course of a conversation. They would not have changed their minds if they had known that one of Severus' most treasured dreams involved poking out their eyes with his bare fingers.  
  
Young Severus was badly built for physical fighting, which was less troubling in Hogwarts than in an ordinary muggle schoolyard, but which nevertheless had an annoyingly persistent ability to cause trouble for him. Potter was one of his biggest problems. James Potter: the dashing athlete, the daring prankster; the one the girls whispered about and the boys acclaimed. People laughed when Potter corrupted Snape's name to form "Snivellus," or when he, Severus, turned a corner and got hit with a nose- lengthening curse. But they looked at him in disgust when he made Potter cough up his own stomach once in the hallway, before the Potter gang had seen him. And then that girl Lily, with the lovely red hair, had escorted James down to the hospital wing after shooting a nasty look Snape's way.  
  
There'd been nothing for him to do when he got out of Hogwarts. His teachers' recommendations glossed over his skills and made certain to mention his "attitude problems," only Dumbledore excepted. And his attempts at finding someplace to further his dream of being an auror; it was almost a joke! His hopes were dragged through the mud by people who didn't think too highly of his bird-of-prey looks and his disdainful tones. He wanted, more than anything, to be out there in the world testing the untold boundaries of curse magic and even the dark arts. He could imagine himself living alone in the middle of a haunted wood, banishing the dark creatures and uncovering the secrets of the forbidden magics that other wizards were too frightened— too weak of mind— to explore. He could see wise men knocking sheepishly on his door in search of his council and guidance, and he could feel the pleasure of turning away a repentant James Potter and his friends; slamming the door in their desperate faces as they begged for his assistance.  
  
He realized that his dream would never come true on the day he read in the Daily Prophet that James Potter was considered one of the Ministry of Magic's most promising young employees. There were a few lines on his wife, Lily, and praises from former classmates were as ubiquitous as commas. That day, or rather that night, since he had slept the daylight hours away, he didn't even bother to scan the classifieds, as he habitually did on other days. He studied the photo, in which Potter had one arm around a gently smiling Lily while using the unoccupied hand to give Snape the finger. Furiously, Snape whipped out his wand and threw the paper across the room, blasting it with an explosion curse that shook the house. He pocketed his wand and stormed out the front door.  
  
Miserable and therefore angry, Snape stormed into the Leaky Cauldron. It was not a place he often visited, and it was not somewhere he really wished to be. It was simply the destination to which his feet brought him, so he chose a table in the shadows at the back of the room and ordered a strong drink. He didn't even want it. But his tongue had asked for it and his hands had paid for it and now his mouth was drinking it down in breathless gulps.  
  
The waitress didn't like him; she gave him a whole pitcher of his drink after he began calling her "mudblood" into his third glass. Snape slurped the stuff straight from the pitcher now, becoming more greasy-looking and more pitifully hateful with every sip. The shapes of the people in the room who didn't care simplified into a mess of blobs that didn't care, and he cursed at them in a low voice until he wasn't making sense.  
  
One shape moved his way, and he visciously burbled the word "mudblood" at what he assumed to be the waitress.  
  
"Severus Snape, you look worse than usual," said the figure, which turned out to be a man; someone he knew, thought Snape disconnectedly. Probably someone just as disagreeable as all the others. The man, who was dressed in robes too rich for most wizards, sat at the table while the drunk man stared through him from beneath drooping eyelids and a curtain of dampish black hair. The visitor sniffed with a clear tint of blue-blooded disgust.  
  
"Really, Severus," said the man, and lifted what seemed to be a fancy walking stick. Gingerly he used it to push away the unwashed hair as Snape eyeballed him with unfocused distaste. "If not for your own sake, I dare say that for my health you might deign to bathe a bit more often?"  
  
Snape looked at the man, puzzled, until his foggy mind slowly clicked, matching the blur of features to a name from his days as a student in Hogwarts. "Malfoy?" he asked thickly.  
  
"Hmm, yes." He sniffed again. "You may call me Lucius, of course. We of pure blood must look upon one another as..." he may have wrinkled his nose, but Snape wasn't certain, "the dearest of friends." Snape was almost sure he was smiling; that cool smile Lucius Malfoy used to wear as he sat by the common room fire with the other purebloods. The thin, slinking Severus had never been exactly welcome in that circle—he had not been well liked, even in Slytherin house. But of all the others, Lucius had been... what was the right word? Not kind, exactly. Malfoy had smiled at him with an appraising, thoughtful air as Snape sat in the corner and jinxed his frazzled tabby cat, Orpheus. At times, Malfoy had turned upon the hook-nosed youth those cold eyes and watched in wonderment as Snape fashioned a new hex. And he would say something like, "My, my. The very vision of a Slytherin," or even once, "Such aptitude should not be so wasted." Malfoy had occasionally engaged Severus in callously polite conversation, but that was not important. The thing that mattered was that while his professors turned their eyes away and refused to acknowledge his abilities, Lucius Malfoy had unthinkingly, though perhaps not unintentionally, given him hope. Snape let his thoughts swim alone and faced the white-haired Malfoy with glassy, unfocused eyes, quickly deciding he could use a bit more drink.  
  
"Oh, for the love of God, Severus," said Lucius scornfully when the other man uncoordinatedly tipped his pitcher up over his head using both hands, and still managed to dump the thick contents up his nose rather than into his mouth. "You there," he called to the uneager waitress, watching from the corner of his eye as Severus Snape spluttered and pawed sloppily at his long, dripping beak. The curly-haired witch approached their table with a bewitched order-taking pad in one hand and a distasteful expression over her face. "We'll have a tablespoon of Origi-State Anti-Intoxication powder, if you please. Bacchus brand, of course. And one half-pint of whatever he's got." Lucius smiled and placed upon the dark pinewood of the table enough knuts and galleons to pay for everything that Snape had already consumed, in addition to what he himself had just ordered.  
  
"Too good to touch a common hand," she mumbled daringly, suspecting rightly that this friend of her earlier customer would feel the same way about mixed blood.  
  
"You are not paid, I think, to remark upon the dealings of your master's customers," observed Lucius casually, watching her down his sculpted Roman nose. With lowered brows that only suggested the onset of an awful headache, the waitress silently stalked off to retrieve both the Origi- State powder and the Migraine Melter draught the barkeeper kept beneath the counter for nights like tonight.  
  
She was back within moments, and as she plopped down the tiny satchel of Origi-State powder and slammed down the mug of alcohol, she paused in her step only just long enough to raise her eyebrows at Snape, who was despondently licking the table, presumably to catch anything he had spilled after accidentally emptying the pitcher.  
  
"A pureblood if ever I saw one," she commented to Lucius, giggling and scooting away before he could respond. The Migraine Melter had done her considerable good.  
  
"Here you are, Severus," said Lucius, who dumped all of the Origi-State powder into the new mug and shoved it towards Snape. "Do take a nice, long sip."  
  
Feebly, Snape lifted his head, drew the mug towards him, and slurped up a good-sized gulp of the warm mixture from over the rim. As his mouth drew away from it, he began to sit up considerably straighter, and his eyes changed from frosted glass beads into impenetrable chunks of glacier ice. These eyes now focused and, glaring undirected malice at all the biting world in its entirety, he used one steady, bony hand to sweep his hair away from his face. He might have been a different man from the soppy mess that had moments before been cleaning the grimy table with his tongue.  
  
"Lucius Malfoy," he said, sneering warily. "I didn't see you sit down. What could you be doing here?" Here Snape proved that he could look down his nose as well as Malfoy, or perhaps better, since he had such an impressively scaled snout from which to observe.  
  
Malfoy sniffed again, but allowed a bit of a pleased smile to touch the corners of his shapely mouth. "Dragging you out of your own piss, it should seem. Rather unpleasant business, really. As one might well imagine. Though what I cannot imagine is why I might find you here in the first place, Severus?"  
  
Snape scowled darkly across the table. "I happen to be getting on fine. I was merely enjoying a brief drink at a popular tavern—"  
  
Malfoy snorted delicately. "Enjoying yourself, were you? Well well. Though I might envision such a performance might please the... rabble," he said, his arm indicating everyone else present, "I would never have guessed the fool might delight in his own sordid antics." Lucius' words ran quick and smooth over his tongue, but they found a nerve like sharp little darts in Snape's flesh as he sat back, smiling.  
  
Like a flash Snape had whipped out his wand, a strong nose-bleeding curse prepared to fly. But Malfoy's wand arm was nearly as quick, and Snape could see that it would be foolish to attack now. With burning hatred, he lowered his wand as Malfoy did the same.  
  
"Now, now, Severus. Cursing anyone won't help either of us."  
  
Snape glowered at him and lifted his mug, taking in a big gulp before lowering it again and swallowing sickly. "It's got... a reviving powder in it," he said, hiding the questions he wanted to ask behind a front of indifferent observation. Malfoy laughed, a single slash of well-bred sound amidst the rumbling chuckles of the other patrons.  
  
"Yes, hmm. But I do think I am beginning to regret not having left you in your inebriated and—well—more pleasant state."  
  
"I was never 'inebriated' in my life, Lucius," hissed Snape indignantly. "I've no idea what you mean by this forced meeting, but I assure you that whatever your business, you are not welcome."  
  
"Pity you've no power here to back such implied threats," said Malfoy with intentional nonchalance. "Pity, you've nothing but that wretched disposition and a small skill in the dark sorceries of all things, wouldn't you agree?" he looked at Snape, who glared frighteningly but answered nothing. "Tu, tut. How unfortunate for you, Severus, that there are no openings at the Ministry for a second-rate dark wizard." By now, his voice was very soft, but more mesmerizing than if he had shouted and danced to emphasize his words.  
  
"Second-rate?!" sneered Snape without feeling. He could tell that Malfoy was getting at something.  
  
"Unless, of course," continued Malfoy, ignoring Snape, "you weren't in need of employment at the Ministry, as it were." He smiled without showing any teeth and leaned in slightly, almost whispering.  
  
"What do you mean, Lucius?" asked Snape coldly, staring him down.  
  
"Few can tell," Lucious shrugged, still grinning. "I myself am honor-bound to speak but little, and then only to those who may be trusted. Are you such a one, Master Snape?" He raised his brows inquiringly, but gave an air that he would not care, whatever Snape replied.  
  
"That all depends," Snape said warily, still eyeing Malfoy with some suspicion as well as a measure of hope.  
  
"Then I suppose I must depend upon you, my dear Snape," said Lucius silkily, smiling again. He reached into his breast pocket and removed a piece of parchment. "Read this, Severus," he commanded with aristocratic ease, holding it out for Snape, who took it suspiciously and opened it. "Don't read it aloud. And when you've finished, spell the words away by ordering them to disappear." Now Malfoy's tones were clipped, urgent, and slightly lacking in their usual arrogance. Snape narrowed his eyes at the other man, who continued, oblivious, saying, "when you want them to reappear, simply say 'the Dark Lord is come.' And tomorrow night, if you wish to know more, you will follow those instructions exactly."  
  
"The Dark Lord?" scoffed Snape with a derisive snort of disbelieving laughter.  
  
"If you are expecting barrels of laughs," said Malfoy haughtily, getting up from his chair, "I suggest you remain sniveling at home, my dear Severus." Smiling unnervingly, Malfoy walked to the door of the Leaky Cauldron and exited, leaving Snape alone with his doctored drink, his mysterious bit of scroll, and a head full to the brim with questions.  
  
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If you liked that, I urge you to read on. And please review; it's very encouraging, critiques as well as comments. How else can a would-be writer improver herself? 


	2. The Yard of No Mercy

Author's note: Well, I've been reading over some other Harry Potters fics, and I've noticed that nearly all of them have disclaimers at the top. I guess it must be a good idea, so I'll state here what should already be obvious: nothing here is really "mine"; even the idea for the story is nothing more than a loose interpretation of the hints and glimpses into the First War with which Ms. Rowling has provided us.  
  
And now the second installment of "The Darkest Mark."  
  
***  
  
On the walk home, Snape hardly even noticed the Muggles who on other occasions would have warranted a sneer. He clutched Malfoy's parchment close to his chest, irrationally paranoid that it would somehow be snatched from his claw-like grip before he had the chance to delve into this new-and only-development in his dull life. The streets of London blurred around him as he receded into his head, and before he consciously realized it, he found himself at his front door. Like him, the townhouse was thin and slightly creepy, its windows dark as his own unfathomable eyes. The door, in keeping with its master's personality, squawked sharply on its hinges as Snape pushed it open and entered.  
  
Dawn sunlight glowed warmly behind the curtains covering the living room window. It would have allowed an excellent view of the street, had Snape not bewitched the glass to show, instead, a view of the heavens as they would look without the interference of daylight or storm clouds. Snape put no stock in the practice of divination and astrology, but the brewing of potions and the use of the Dark Arts often depended upon the cycles of the moon and stars.  
  
At the moment, however, Snape was interested neither in the window nor in brewing up darkness. Stiffly he seated himself in an old armchair in the corner of the room and barked the words "the Dark Lord is come." Once again the script spread out across the page in tidy lines of beautiful cursive letters. There was no heading or explanation, just as Snape had noticed inside the Leaky Cauldron; it started straight off in a list of instructions. It said:  
  
Wear black robes. Conceal the face. Let no man know who hides  
beneath.  
At midnight on the night following the giving of this notice,  
the bearer will bring himself to that place known as the Yard of  
No Mercy.  
He will come to the stone marked "Baron Horbis Toggernag  
Velliard."  
He will lie down upon this grave.  
He will know fear. Later will he know power.  
  
Snape's forehead wrinkled as his eyes narrowed at the words. He had heard of the Yard of No Mercy; it was a graveyard in which the ancient pureblood families had once buried the bodies of relations who had disgraced their family names. He knew, because his father had threatened both him and his mother with interment there, that upon the ground was laid a terrible curse that prevented the dead from finding rest, forcing them to become ghosts of the most disagreeable sort; the angry sort. It seemed to Snape that to visit such a known haunting ground must be called "unwise," to put it as mildly as possible, although "insane" seemed more descriptive and more accurate.  
  
Insane. Severus twirled the word about in his mind. Sometimes when he let his thoughts wander as deep into his being as he could painlessly allow, a knot would form in his stomach as he considered the idea that there was really something wrong with him. Now and then, the idea seemed rather attractive. If he were mad, he might blame his failed life on that very fact, and he mused to himself that such subtle insanity was quite as incurable as any personality flaw.  
  
Still, Snape was not stupid, and he never really believed it, himself, when he toyed with the idea. Rather, he was a man of above-average intelligence, though one who was losing his patience with this sort of existence. A stroll through the Yard of No Mercy might be chancy, even suicidal, but Snape thrilled to the idea with the clear knowledge that though he might be taking a risk, he had remarkably little to lose.  
  
Once again Snape slept the day away on the dusty old sofa situated beneath the bewitched window. When he was awake, its moldy fibers liked to work themselves up inside his long, greasy nose and make him sneeze, but they did not seem to bother him as he breathed shallowly in his sleep.  
  
Even as he dreamt, perhaps of the memories that so burned him to recall, his brow furrowed between his severe black eyebrows. When he awoke a little past seven in the evening, he found that he was angry and afraid without a reason or a person to whom he might direct such emotions. At first, as he rose and hesitantly selected an ebony-black robe from a trunk whose contents he had never gotten around to stowing in the closet, he was livid. But after a quick visit to the privy and subsequently a small breakfast of domestic sphinx eggs and a glass of water, he lost his grip on the irrational fury.  
  
Agitated to the point that some might have called him nervous, Snape whiled away the rest of the evening trying to read Trodgel's Anthology of Little- Known Curses of the Early Sixteenth Century. He was not in a good humor for soaking up knowledge-his eyes kept staring off beyond the words as his thoughts wandered. But yesterday's edition of the Daily Prophet was a pile of ash, and today's must still lay in the post box, where Snape had no desire to make a move and retrieve the traitorous text.  
  
At eleven thirty he rose from his favorite reading chair.  
  
"Sombrus maska," he said, breaking the thin silence of the room with the spell and flicking his wand at Trodgel's Anthology. In his hand the book flowed from a grimy, four-inch thick, hard-bound tome into a silky black mask, the like of an executioner's hood. This he stowed away inside his robes. Snape's wand swished through the air a second time, and as he did so he called out the apparition spell. There was a great crack in the air as he was suddenly not there, and if any of the muggles on the street took note of the noise they were not brave enough to confront their skulking, grimy-haired neighbor.  
  
In the same instant that his form had disappeared from his living room in London, he reappeared just as suddenly on the shoulder of a muddy dirt road somewhere out in the countryside. He frowne at the landscape as though insulted by its sudden presence about him. It was regrettable, he thought to himself, that this was the closest to the Yard of No Mercy that it was possible to apparate.  
  
Slowly he trudged along the muddy road, moving steadily southward in the direction in which he knew the Yard to lie. For the present he stowed his wand and kept the hood in his pocket. Out here, surrounded by nothing but fields and hills and tiny copses of trees, he did not expect to meet any Muggles, but he thought it would be best not to take too many chances right off. A man wearing a robe would make them suspicious, but a faceless man in robes would send them racing for their shot-guns, and such a confrontation could only cause unwanted complications.  
  
The air was very damp, Snape observed, sniffing the scent of a past rain and of fertile fields. The stars in the sky were nearly entirely obliterated by a gray covering of billowy rainclouds, which gave the raven- haired observer a distinct feeling of being alone. That sense of emptiness and vulnerability prompted him to take out his wand again after only a few feet, which in turn made him feel like a simpleton. Already he was angry again and looking murderous; what would he do when he was forced to cope with the menace of the old bone yard? He told himself that he would make any ghost he met there quickly wish it had never died.  
  
It took him approximately a quarter of an hour to make his way up the road, though he had sighted the silvery gates after five minutes. Approaching them now, he made ready the "alohomora" charm, but quickly realized that someone had already magicked it open. He pushed the filigreed gate slowly inward, and rather than squeaking rustily, it seemed to hush the croaking tune of cricket song, as though it swallowed the sound.  
  
Snape let his face relax. Nothing seemed amiss amongst the rows of graves he now saw laid out over the landscape. Not a single ghostly form walked the hills on this dark night. Relaxing a bit, so that he now appeared slightly stoop-shouldered, he took out his hood and pulled it over his angular face and greasy head. The dark landscape appeared even darker through the close weave of the hood, so that he found it necessary to light his path with the "lumos" spell. It was only a small light that he had conjured, but it seemed he had awoken something, for as the tip of his wand glowed into brightness, a cold and unnatural wind puffed across his face. Instantly he stepped backward, into the guard position, and held his wand over his head in preparation.  
  
A few feet ahead of his location, the air suddenly seemed to congeal into a milky fluid, recognizable after a moment as the phantasmal form of a round- faced, long-haired woman.  
  
"Hello there," she said in a pleasant-enough voice. Snape did not move. "Are you looking for a gentleman named Velliard?"  
  
"No, not the gentleman," Snape said warily, without trusting her. "Just his grave, thank you."  
  
"What? Oh, I see," she smiled. "you don't want to run into his ghost." She laughed ladylike into her hand, as though this were a ridiculous reservation. "Don't worry; he doesn't come around here much."  
  
"Hmm," Snape acknowledged her with thoughtful condescension. "I don't fancy meeting any of your friends tonight," he hinted disparagingly.  
  
"Not to worry," trilled the female ghost, smiling again. "Follow me, sir!"  
  
She led him through the graves in an inimitable pattern, twisting around old moss-covered stones and winding through the cleaner new ones. It was difficult to tell, but Snape's innate sense of direction told him that he was being led in loops. The thought made his breath quicken and his grip on his wand grow tighter, but still he followed the dead woman.  
  
"He we are," she said brightly, stopping abruptly in front of one of the older graves. "Baron Velliard! Do I get a thank you??" she batted her eyes and cupped a hand to her ear dramatically.  
  
"Thank. you." Snape unwillingly spat the words, with almost a touch of sarcasm.  
  
"Always a pleasure," said the ghost modestly, as though Snape had thought to say it himself. "Ta ta, my dear!" and she seemed to drift apart in the still air like foam in the open seas. In a moment, she was gone all together, and Severus was left alone to consider the grave.  
  
It was just about midnight, now; he thought the cheerful ghost might have knowingly led him around until the right time, for now there was not a spare moment left in which he might allow rationality to outweigh his decision to come. Even as he thought about it, he was sitting upon the ground, on top of the grave. He breathed as deeply as his shallow lungs would permit, scratched his great nose briefly with his long fingers, and pushed the doubt from his mind. Now he leaned back so that the top of his head was mere inches from touching the headstone, just as the decaying corpse of the Baron must be laying in the ground beneath him.  
  
He lay there only minutes, with the cool earth at his back and his eyes on the overcast sky when the clouds above him began to drift apart into invisible vapor, revealing the brilliant stars and the orb of the full moon. The fluffy veil of cloud that had kept them from looking down upon the Earth had dissipated altogether in such a short time that Snape darkly suspected some sort of powerful sorcery at work. He crossed his arms over his chest, not in the manner of the dead, but in the way that a living man would do it if he happened to be impatient, or-just possibly-nervous.  
  
Suddenly, the darkened faces of two men appeared above him with a suddenness that gave Snape a start. Their hands shot out from beneath their deep black robes as they came to stand over him, and before Snape could stand or raise his head, they had his arms and pulled them out to the sides, at right angles to his body. One of them wrestled his wand out of the vice-like grip of his left hand and stowed it away inside Snape's own inner wand pocket. This was some small comfort, thought a part of him; they had not taken the wand away. As he thought this, another two gentlemen appeared at his legs and pinned them to the ground.  
  
"I don't suppose any of you have heard of 'locomotor mortis?' " Snape scoffed coldly at them. The four cloaked figures did not answer. Just then, the dark shape of a fifth man strode into his line of vision, peering down at him from over Velliard's headstone.  
  
"Indeed, my friend," said a cultured voice that Snape recognized as Lucius Malfoy's. "Though perhaps you might find 'rigor mortis' " more effective in this case, wouldn't you say?"  
  
"Rigor mortis isn't a curse," sneered Snape, his heart lifting. "It's-oh." It sank lower than before.  
  
"Yes," purred Malfoy, a smile evident in his words. "This bit of the ceremony cannot work with that sort of spell already in place. It would muddy the purity of the magic we intend to work tonight. And, my friend, I do think you might finding shutting up an excellent option, unless you have a reason for inviting death upon yourself this night."  
  
Snape nodded affirmatively, though he felt the slight burn of his own helplessness at this agreement. Silence was the response, but he had the feeling that Malfoy had understood. All was quiet-even the faint singing of the crickets had been replaced by the small rustling of a warm breeze.  
  
The robed men did not leave their posts, but after a moment Snape saw the men bow their head towards something that must be coming up upon him from the direction of his lower half.  
  
"Master," said the five men in broken unison. Snape now dreaded the moment when he would see this "Master," but he did not have much time in which to become afraid.  
  
At his feet, another man appeared. At least, he was man-like, with short, pitch-black hair and broad shoulders; nose where a nose would be expected, and eyes and mouth in more or less the proper position. What made Snape's breath catch in his throat was that he still managed, within the framework of a human body, to have the appearance of a great dark snake. And Severus Snape had a slight inkling that it might be of the poisonous kind. 


	3. In Pain

Author's Note: I'm back! Wow, I really like writing fanfiction. Whoo-hoo! Like it or hate it, here we go...  
  
***  
  
Instinctively Snape raised his head at the sight of the reptilian monster, but Malfoy stooped down instantly and clapped his hand to the prostrate man's black-enshrouded forehead. The back of Snape's skull was slammed down into the dirt of the grave beneath him.  
  
Into his limited range of vision drifted the somber snake-face of the only man he'd ever seen who could pull off the title of "Dark Lord" without appearing ridiculously self-obsessed. His visage made Snape want to squirm away, but the strength of the robed men holding him made even twitching nearly impossible.  
  
The thing's mouth opened, much wider than it should have, and it spoke in a low, grinding voice that rumbled the lowest octaves in the range of human hearing. "So, we've a Snape tonight," it said. Its eyes were cold now, but a slight aura of humanness touched them with a look of keen intelligence that made Snape imagine him to be capable of emotion equal to any ordinary man, anger most of all.  
  
"The only Snape I knew was an idiot. They tell me his son was even more a fool. But you have come highly recommended by your Death Maker." He paused, and there was silence. "A Malfoy has never yet told me tales." A scaly, long-fingered hand rose and gestured towards the top of Severus' head, where Malfoy crouched. "Now let him find out why he was brought here. Begin, Malfoy."  
  
Snape would have been confused by what he heard if he had listened to it on a summer's day in his own silent dwelling. In this moment, in which everything seemed strange and his life appeared to be in immediate danger, he could hardly even focus on the... Dark Lord's meaning.  
  
It calmed his thumping heart but little when Malfoy let go of his head and began to speak, as though he were reading from a script inside his head.  
  
"I declare myself Death Maker to this Snape," he intoned, standing up to tower above the mentioned man's eye level. Down the long track of his nose, Severus felt a droplet of cold sweat trickle, and realized that he feared for his life. From this seed of emotion came a sudden flare of malice toward Malfoy; Malfoy the Death Maker. The man who was now repeating a question which he had just asked and of which Snape had not been aware.  
  
"How will pledge yourself; to faithful service or a coward's death?" Malfoy demanded, looking at him emotionlessly. It was like looking into the eyes of a cat; one got the feeling that if someone stumbled into the room with a sword in his chest, he would have snidely remarked upon the mess and gone about his business.  
  
Snape allowed himself a look of disdain and answered with his head tilted back so that he would have looked very snooty if he had been standing. "I will serve any wizard who can best me. I do hope you were not referring to yourself, Lucius," he shot viciously at Malfoy; a small revenge for having invited him here.  
  
"I shall repeat the question, and I expect that you will be able to answer such a simple query on the third attempt. Now-"  
  
"Silence, Malfoy. Let him up; let go, all of you." The voice of the Dark Lord broiled in Snape's ears, making him regret his rash speech. Still, it was quite a relief to feel the weights lift from his limbs and to be able to push himself into a sitting position. He pointedly did not seek out the eyes of the Dark Lord until he had drawn out his wand and regained his feet. The look on that face was terrible: it smiled and stared at him unblinkingly.  
  
"Not like your grandsire. And I had expected a sniveling boy." He kept on smiling and his eyes seemed to grow even wider, as Snape found that he could not turn away his gaze. "Yes, that's right, isn't it? They called you Snivellus. How clever."  
  
A fire burned down Snape's spine, and his pale face paled slightly more at a memory that should have been tucked safely inside his own mind. Suddenly he was reliving vividly raw memories of vile days in the halls of Hogwarts' School. There was Potter's face, upside down to Snape's eyes and laughing pitilessly. In a trice he had gone, and the face became instead the snake-like abomination.  
  
"Everything is so very close to the surface in your mind. Everything that wounds you." The creature closed its eyes at last while Snape stood ramrod straight and gaped with horrified rage. Into the moments he had most regretted and feared, the Dark Lord had thrust him without warning. At that moment, he hated himself as he had in school; nearly as much as he had hated Potter and his gang. Wide-eyed with the strength of those moments and the freshness of his self-loathing, he turned his eyes away from the Dark Lord, who smiled and spoke again.  
  
"So then, you are as pitiful as I imagined," he said, his smile fading to a look of disgust. "Not so much in that you let me into your head," he continued, moving closer, "and not even for allowing such trivialities to bring you to your knees. Figuratively, of course. You're still standing, and that's a plus. But, you see, you've dropped your wand..."  
  
Snapping out of his miserable thoughts like a swimmer breaking away from a deadly riptide, Snape realized with horror that the snake-thing was right. His limp fingers had unconsciously lost their grip on the barrel of the wand, and it lay uselessly on the ground at his left side. Immediately he stooped to pick it up, not noticing as the Dark Lord's hand raised his own wand into the air.  
  
"Crucio!" cried the Dark Lords in an inhuman voice, pointing his wand at Snape and fixing his horrible eyes on his victim's face. In a most undignified manner, Snape plunged forward, face first, with the force of the searing, horrible pain that hit him like a blast of lightning. He felt as though he could not breath; that his limbs were being torn from his torso, that his skin was being flayed, that his muscles were being ripped away from his bones. His eyes seemed to be shredding their sockets, and he felt such a horrible, sharp feeling in his innards that a dagger thrust into his stomach could have no more increased his pain than ended it. Though he could not tell, there issued from his mouth a loud, un- controllable, moaning cry which faded into a burbling sound as his lungs ran out of breath to sustain it.  
  
He had missed the wand altogether; it might have been in another world, the pain was so all-consuming. Until suddenly it ceased, and he found himself with his face in the damp grass of an older grave, suddenly able to feel the wand pressing into his body. He realized he had fallen upon it as his senses began to straighten themselves. All at once his ears became attuned to the sound of the Dark Lord's approach. Lifting his head, he felt the sudden urge to vomit. He felt it coming up his throat, but managed to control himself before he wretched all over the headstone beside the place where he had fallen.  
  
"Hmm. Many a better man than you have made a mess of themselves after such an ordeal. I will give you that." By now, Snape was blinking his exhausted, bloodshot eyes and regaining some sense of where he was and what was going on. He felt his fingers brush the wood of his wand as he reached towards it blearily from his new kneeling position. For once, he was not angry, but instead terrified into a sort of blazing calm that reached his eyes in a cold, lively glint, as though they had crystallized into sharpened diamond points.  
  
With a sudden, awkward movement he threw himself forward and gripped the wand tightly. Whirling around in the general direction of his torturer (his head was still spinning a bit) he flicked his wand and shouted at the top of his voice, "Avada kedavra!"  
  
It was a spell from an old book of arcane magic that he had uncovered years ago left on a table in Hogwarts' grand library. It had obviously belonged in the restricted section, and had not seemed like something that any student at Hogwarts should have been allowed to see. He wondered afterward if someone or something might have placed it there where it knew he would see it. Perhaps Salazar Slytherin had left more of himself at the school than the legend of a Chamber of Secrets.  
  
Now he pointed his wand with a steady hand, grateful for his chance acquisition of the book, as he felt a bolt of power shoot out of its tip. He heard the thump of a body fall, but when he found the awful eyes of the Dark Lord peering down at him, filled with his peculiar sort of life, he realized that he had missed. His scrambled to his feet with his stomach churning uncomfortably. At once he saw that one of his black-clad captors had fallen, and that his companions were shaking their heads, obviously aware that he would already be dead. Snape's head snapped around to find the Dark Lord's eyes again, at the same time stepping back defensively and raising his wand.  
  
"Well, you do have a knowledge of the Art!" said the snake-man with a slight, unnerving smile. He was evidently pleased. "I wish you hadn't felled Kerchel... But better him than me, I say."  
  
Now his frightening grin stretched literally from ear to ear, showing off his tiny pointed teeth. "On the other hand, I have lost one of my most loyal Death Eaters. Crucio!"  
  
The pain was as bad as before, and he crumpled to his knees. He managed, this time, to hold on to his wand, simply because his muscles had clenched around it in their agony. When the pain let up- in less time than before- he could not hold back the gag reflex, and he vomited bile down the front of his black robes.  
  
"Put him back in place, and hold him there," instructed the creature. "Though I do not think he will struggle very much."  
  
The Death Eaters complied, assenting with a nod of the head and a somber "yes, Lord." Too disoriented to protest or even think clearly, Snape felt hands take hold of him by the shoulders and lift him onto his feet to drag him onto the Barron's grave. He had almost come to terms with still being alive when someone pushed him down and turned him onto his back, at the same time ripping his wand from his loosely clasped fingers and remembering to remove it from his reach. He could not see whence it was taken, which was not to say that he didn't strain his neck to its fullest extent in trying to look around the flowing black folds of the Death Eaters' apparel.  
  
One of the men, the heaviest of the remaining four, sat so roughly upon his legs that he felt certain that if he lived, he might have to have his blood- starved legs amputated. The others held his arms, and Malfoy- he supposed it must be he, although he could not see his face- stood at his side.  
  
"Now then: tell us how you will pledge yourself; to faithful service or a coward's death?" Malfoy repeated.  
  
Snape squinted at him. "Service," he said defiantly.  
  
"Then you will carry this dark mark as a sign: a sign that you are a disciple of the great Lord Voldemort, till the end of life and ever beyond."  
  
With his head free, Snape was able to turn and watch as Malfoy took out a triangle-bladed silver dagger from inside his robes and pushed up his sleeve. Snape could not make out what it was, but he could tell that on Malfoy's upper arm there was some sort of mark, apparently tattooed onto the skin.  
  
Quickly Malfoy raised the dagger to his arm and, wincing, opened a slit in the flesh at the site of the mark by making a slash across its center. With the blood running down his arm, he knelt down beside Snape and put the red- soaked knife to the flesh of his upper arm.  
  
Severus Snape did not protest as Malfoy cut the lines into his flabby limb, but he turned his head and shut his eyes tightly. It didn't seem so bad after enduring Crucio, but the sting of the cold slicing hurt nonetheless.  
  
The Death Eater took his time at his task and did not finish for some time. Just when he felt his resolve might not hold, that he might scream to the stars who witnessed the ceremony, the dagger-point came away from his arm, leaving the fresh wound bloody and buzzing with pain. Malfoy then put a hand to his own arm, reopened his clotting gash with his fingers, and scooped some of the blood into his hand. This he wiped into Snape's incised arm, and smeared it into the slits. A cooling, soothing feeling instantly spread over the mangled area, and Snape gave a short, involuntary sigh of relief. "The Dark Mark spawns in your flesh," Malfoy said, using that same deadpan voice. "The master will awaken you to your purpose."  
  
Upon hearing those words, fear once more welled up inside of Snape. He could guess just from hearing the words that his ordeal was not yet over. Could it possibly get worse? he wondered, and realized cynically that he was certain it could. His conviction solidified when he saw the snake-man- he realized that he must be the "great Lord Voldemort"- gliding towards him. His wand was put away somewhere, and Snape thought to himself that at least he was probably safe from the cruciatus curse.  
  
"This Snape has bound himself to me. I accept," said Voldemort tonelessly. He bent down towards the ground and his thin hand came towards Snape's arm, hovering a moment above the fresh red design before covering it entirely with his palm. It was worse, all right. Worse than the effects of "crucio." But Severus did not feel much of it, for after a few seconds he was driven into unconsciousness. The pain would not leave even a shadow on his memory when he awakened some time later, lying on a stone slab somewhere in the gently breathing dark.  
  
***  
  
What did you think? Any suggestions or comments on how I can improve? Thank you for making it to the end (or at least scrolling down to look at it!) 


	4. To Be a Death Eater

Author's Note: Here is chapter four. I hope that anyone who is interested will like it. Is anybody willing to review me?? If this is boring, you can say so. If it's just that no one happens to be reading, then I guess oh well. At least I'm having fun, right?  
  
This chapter is almost exclusively a conversation between Snape and his Death Maker, Lucius Malfoy, but you'll get an idea of what ol' Severus was thinking when he decided to join Voldemort (in my own imagination). Here we go...  
  
***  
  
There was thankfully no pain when Snape awoke; there was only the cold sensation of stone against his palms. His back, too, attested to the fact that wherever he was in this blackness, he was laid out on a slab of rock.  
  
He blinked his eyes, but there didn't seem to be much difference between opened and closed, and he clenched his fists at the panicked thought that he might be blind. He sat up quickly and then went perfectly still, his ears trying to pick out any clues to his surroundings. That was when he heard the slow, heavy breathing, off to perhaps his right side. It could be human, Snape deliberated, but there was the possibility that it was an animal. The knowledge hit him that it didn't really matter; one way or another, the breathing represented a definite threat if he could not identify it, and in the depths of the darkness he could not.  
  
There was nothing he could do but listen and wait, unless he wanted to feel his way around, and the danger of running into something living made him reject the idea before he had even begun to consider it. At least he was remaining calm. It was his first time since before he'd bought his wand that he'd ever been without it, and although its absence annoyed him greatly, he did not allow himself to panic over the fact that it was taken; gone.  
  
Wait- perhaps not gone! He could feel a familiar presence inside his robes, in the side pocket where he kept the wand, and with an exultant grin that no one could see, he reached in his hand and closed it around something wooden. His wand! They must have replaced it after he'd lost consciousness. Snape drew it out carefully, unnecessarily worried that somehow he would lose it again in this blackness.  
  
"Lumos," he whispered, and a tiny light grew at what he could now tell for certain was the tip of his wand. He was glad to see that his sight was as good as ever, but the scant light of the spell was not enough to see much more than his hand and the gray of his stone bed, so he allowed the little spark to grow into an orb of strong, bright light.  
  
The source of the breathing quickly became clear as the light touched the four stone walls and threw a Death Eater seated in the corner into dramatic shadow. Severus narrowed his eyes at him and readied his wand for a spell he realized he wouldn't need, watching intently as the faceless man began to stir as though he had been sleeping. He stretched his arms and stood up, the hidden face turned toward Snape and his lighted wand.  
  
"Oh good, Severus. You've awakened," said Lucius, sounding tired but still mocking. He pulled back his hood and reached up to remove what Snape now realized was a mask. Malfoy's face beneath it was slightly pale, and his lips were faintly tremulous. His right hand moved to clutch the left arm in the place where Snape had seen Voldemort's dark brand in the Yard. On the lower part of the wall against which Lucius had been dozing, a red smudge attested to the fact that the blood from his wound had seeped through his black robes, though this was not obvious at a glance towards the arm.  
  
Snape placed his feet confidently upon the stone of the floor and approached Lucius so that he was only a few feet away from him. "What is all this?" Severus demanded, brandishing his wand. The Death Eater smiled slightly.  
  
"You have joined the ranks of the Dark Lord's Death Eaters," he said casually. "You will be an asset to us, I think. If I do say so myself." The smile twitched uncharacteristically upon his face, and Snape thought just how haggard he looked. It gave him a twinge of satisfaction that Lucius had suffered.  
  
"Oh actually, Malfoy, I don't think I will be joining you. A steady job isn't worth what you've put me through. You deceptive bastard. At least, I see, you haven't come out much better," he sneered at the white- faced Malfoy. Even joking that a pureblood was illegitimate could get him riled up, but to insult one so blatantly often provoked trouble. Severus took that chance in the face of Malfoy's current weak state.  
  
"You know nothing of suffering," spat Lucius, his mouth trembling quite visibly now as he spoke. "All of us underwent the same ordeal in order to pledge ourselves to the Dark Lord."  
  
"Everyone except your dear master, of course. That's the way it goes," he said contemptuously. Lucius stared at him with a slightly psychotic half-grin. He was not well.  
  
"How do you think he became what he is today?" he asked incredulously.  
  
"Bitten by a weresnake?" mused Snape, gaining confidence  
  
"You." glowered Lucius. "You cannot imagine what he had them do to him. That he was not driven mad by the first of the rituals is astounding. That he ever survived the last is proof of his destiny and highest purpose: to cleanse the world of the muggle plague; to rid us of the tainted half- bloods."  
  
"You're ranting, Lucius. And you really do look wretched," Severus said with smug disdain.  
  
"No wonder at that," Malfoy said, glaring. "Since last night I have, as your Death Maker, Severus, observed the proper procedure by mixing my blood into yours. And how you can complain I'll never fathom," he mumbled viciously.  
  
"You've been mixing your dirty blood in my pure veins?" demanded Snape with mock indignation, goading the Death Eater once more. This time the implications of these words struck a nerve in Malfoy, and he found and raised his wand with a rapidity that Snape had not expected. But his own wand was immediately raised to counter an attack, and he smirked at Malfoy's attempt.  
  
"Come now Lucius. Stop moping and take an elixir or something. Your face is white as Juno's hide."  
  
Unnaturally docile for a Malfoy, he lowered his wand with an unsteady hand and performed a simple charm. "Accio blood restorative potion," he said weakly, and from a stone shelf close by, a glass bottle threw itself forward and into his shaking hand.  
  
While Malfoy choked down the predictably red potion, Snape allowed his eyes to wander the room. It was obviously a mausoleum; he could see the skeletal and not-so-skeletal remains laid out on the stone shelves cut into the walls and upon stone biers exactly like the one upon which he had awakened. The fact that there was no smell did not catch his attention, though his subconscious realized that anti-stink spells were common at all wizard burial sites.  
  
The only thing that he did not see was a door. All of the walls looked solid, and the areas of floor that he was able to see did not appear to contain any sort of trap door.  
  
"I won't be leaving here until you're through, will I?" sniffed Snape disgustedly.  
  
Malfoy, who had emptied the bottle and was already beginning to color, looked at him and smiled in a very Lucius manner.  
  
"Of course not. But you wouldn't want to leave anyway, now would you?" he asked coldly.  
  
"Well, actually... yes I would," Severus said, folding his arms. Now nearly himself again, Malfoy laughed experimentally in his usual tones.  
  
"You cannot pretend you aren't at all curious. Or you never would have come," Lucius smiled deviously.  
  
"I was curious at first, naturally. And then. I seem to recall being cursed, tortured, and thrown about without good cause, although I believe at one point I lost consciousness, so I can't say anything with absolute certainty." Snape regarded Malfoy with his unblinking black eyes.  
  
Cooly Lucius returned the gaze, and laughed in amusement. "True. But surely you must have some desire to know what you've gotten yourself into."  
  
"I rather believe you were the one who got me involved in your masochistic little cult," Snape replied huffily. "And besides, I think I've heard enough from you to have a pretty clear idea about your purpose. Correct me if I'm wrong, now: we're- you are, at any rate- working to eventually wipe out all muggles and mudbloods in the world so that the only ones left standing are to be purebloods and faithful followers of this Voldemort, who looks like a snake and likes to inflict terrible pain upon everyone with whom he comes into contact. And you do realize, of course, that as vile as the mudbloods are, wiping out all of them would lead to either rampant inbreeding or the extinction of wizardry?"  
  
Malfoy was shaking his head. "Do not speak the Dark Lord's name," he said warningly. "He expects only a formal title from the mouths of his followers."  
  
"But I am right?" asked Snape.  
  
"Partially, I suppose," said Malfoy with a shrug, leaning comfortably against a stone shelf behind him. "But incorrect on many points. For one thing, there are purebloods scattered all about the globe, and more than enough to safely continue the pureblood lines for ages to come, after the Dark Lord fulfills his destiny." He looked dreamy at the thought, as though he could hardly wait. "But there is something important which you have overlooked, Severus."  
  
"And that is...?"  
  
"Think about what the Lord has offered to you. Satisfaction, at destroying the hated muggles, but also relief, in a place where wizards with your unappreciated talents are at last given credence... And lastly, but best of all that he provides: great power." His eyes sparkled and he clasped his hands together. "What he has made himself into, what powers he has gained through all that he endured... His Death Eaters are allowed to taste of it freely; a gift no other man will ever know." He closed his eyes in internal ecstasy.  
  
"What do you mean, 'freely,' when Voldemort is constantly threatening you all with the cruciatus curse and worse?!" demanded Snape in angry disbelief.  
  
"I've told you. The kind of power he offers, he gained by sacrificing himself on an alter of his own ambition," Lucius explained with a strange passion in his voice. "What he now is, is not what he was. He would not turn back the time, but he has lost much of himself. None of us know how much of our Lord is any more than pure, focused power, bent into the shape of a man by nothing save the force of the Dark Lord's will." Malfoy's drifting, dreaming eyes returned to Severus' skeptical face. "All there is for us is to do what we love best within the framework of our Master's plan. In return we receive more power than we might ever hope to deserve, without the consequences. Doesn't that sound worth it?"  
  
Snape pursed his lips, thinking deeply. It was true: his dreams were their dreams, to a far extent. He imagined his life had he never accepted that scroll from Lucius in the Leaky Cauldron, and found that he could hardly bear to think about the uselessness of his entire existence up to this point. What was the use of being alive, he thought, if he could not do what he most wanted to?  
  
And what is that? he asked himself. He had wanted to be an auror, in a way, but he had known all along that what he really wanted to do was dig into magic's darkest depths, to rise above the taunting of little boys who could have no idea of what he was really capable. Slowly a smile spread across his face; not the fanatical, far-off grin that Malfoy had displayed in his fervor- but an outward sign of his realization that the Dark Lord could provide him with the things he desired. He wasn't thrilled with the idea of taking out muggles, as he had a vague notion it was true that a man got back what he dealt out, but neither death nor a return to his direction- less life seemed more attractive than the opportunity now presenting itself. He looked up to see Malfoy appraising him with that little smirk of a smile.  
  
"I'm a Death Eater, then, am I?" Snape asked finally.  
  
"Go on and look at your arm," suggested Lucius.  
  
Having almost forgotten the mark, now that it no longer pained him, he rolled up his sleeve to look at it in the light cast by his wand. To his brief astonishment, there were no visible incisions, and no blood; only a mark that appeared to be a tattoo in the likeness of a snake and skull. Gingerly he touched it, but it felt like any other patch of skin. He rubbed it, just to be certain, but nothing happened.  
  
"Well. I am a marked man," Snape commented, rolling down his sleeve again.  
"Marked for advancement under the Dark Lord, greatest among wizards," added Malfoy. "Shall we go, then?"  
  
"Let's," agreed Snape. He watched thoughtfully as Lucius swiped his wand through the air and said, "Portus aprecio!" A section of shelves faded from the wall against which Malfoy had been leaning. There instead was a dark doorway with steps beyond, leading upwards.  
  
"Come, Severus," said Malfoy after lighting his wand, starting to lead the way up the stone steps. Snape followed him up and through a second doorway, into an antechamber where a greater percentage of shelves had been filled than in the smaller room in which he had awoken.  
  
"The chamber we've just left... That was reserved for the worst of those who disgraced their families. I've actually an uncle down there, although as you know the practice of using the Yard is not permitted any longer."  
  
"What did he do?" asked Snape absently.  
  
"He joined the Dark Lord towards the beginning, before he had even completed the last of his transformations. But after a few months of running about with our Lord, he met a muggle girl and decided to marry her. He denounced his master for- of all things- being arrogant and overly ambitious." Malfoy reached a door and opened it to allow a cool, gray sort of sunlight to spill through. "When the Dark Lord caught him, he did not die easily."  
  
The two men allowed the Lumos spell to go out as they emerged under an overcast sky. Snape glared slightly at his Death Maker.  
  
"Are you trying to frighten me, Lucius?" asked Snape. "I realize already that it would be foolish to think one could outwit the Dark Lord, thank you."  
  
Malfoy laughed. "Of course not. It is not my job to frighten you, Severus. It is our Master's."  
  
As though on cue, Snape stopped suddenly in his tracks at a sharp, burning sensation in his arm. Where the mark had lain harmlessly upon his flesh, he now felt it was on fire. He covered it uselessly with his other hand, and looking up uncomprehendingly, he saw that Malfoy was doing the same.  
  
"What is this?" Snape hissed, his arm throbbing.  
  
"The Dark Lord," gulped Malfoy, slightly more composed than the other, less experienced Death Eater. "He is calling us to him."  
  
***  
  
What did you think? Like? No? Yes? Well? 


	5. Aparecicum Duo

Author's Note: Thank you, thank you, thank you for the reviews! I am so glad you seem to like it! I had to respond...  
  
Thank you Lady Game; now tell me truthfully and tell me please: how did you know I love Terry Pratchett? Did I steal anything from him?? I haven't read anything by him for a while, now, so if something has worked its way into my story, please tell me so that I can kill myself, resurrect my decaying body, and go fix it! And thanks again! Thanks you bamfbabe; that's some encouragement! Thank you Juxtaposed1; I'm glad you liked it, and I really am having so much fun, despite being a cliché kid! If I could write original character stories that flowed out as easily as this one, I would be one happy girl! Thank you Bena Glinney; you signed up just for this story?? You're joking... Thank you! Thank you Isabell Klein; I'm really thrilled you took the time to email me! Thank you Lisa Meunier; even though you didn't write a review, getting to be on your favorites list is an honor!  
  
As for notes about this chapter: this might be A LITTLE PG-13, due to the death of innocents, for anyone who is really disturbed by that. It's not very graphic. Also, I may have made a few un-English mistakes, so I apologize for that. And I think I put the Dark Mark on the wrong place on the arm... if this is confirmed, I'll just go back and change it. Lastly, I want to bow down to JK Rowling and her Ron Weasley, who of course originated the broken wand plot point... You'll see. That's not to say I don't realize that all of this is really her idea, but some things need extra thanks and such.  
  
FINALLY, after all that blabbing, here is chapter 5 of The Darkest Mark.  
  
***  
  
The sharpness of the burning sensation faded away as Lucius and Snape hurried down the dirt road, but the Dark Mark upon each one's arm yet pulsated with a faint pain. Lord Voldemort would not be kept waiting for long, but if they were in luck, he would allow them enough time to arrive at the meeting place.  
  
"Do- you- know where it is- we're supposed to- go?" Snape panted, breathless, as he rushed along behind Malfoy. If he was correct, they would be near the apparition point any moment now, and it was good to be prepared.  
  
"Yes-" Malfoy returned, his breath entering and exiting loudly through his nose. He was trying to run with dignity, but it was difficult for a Malfoy to do anything remotely physical without appearing very out of his element; even silly. His white-blond hair did not look nearly so refined when it was blowing out behind him like a comet's trail. "Knockturn Alley-we'll apparate... everyone else will already be-there."  
  
Snape did not answer, since he was too busy dealing with the cramp in his side. He didn't think he'd ever had to run like this before. And to top it all off, he was looking even more stupid than Malfoy. Snape's black robes, for one thing, were not of the billowy sort. They had their own particular way of flapping about the wearer's knees as he dragged himself along, and the effect made him look less like a debonair pureblood than a skulking bogeyman who was about to trip over his own shuffling feet.  
  
In fact, he was about to trip. He did. His foot caught in the hem of his robes and he toppled, catching himself ungracefully just before his nose could smash into the packed earth. He heard a faint "crack," and hoped that he had not just broken a rib. That would have made breathing even more unpleasant.  
  
"Really, Severus," Lucius puffed, drawing to a dusty halt and smoothing back his ruffled hair. It was remarkable, the way he could still achieve such a condescending tone even as he stood there, panting. Snape, coughing as the dirt swirled into his throat and sinuses, looked up angrily.  
  
"Don't you think-we're out of range by now?" he demanded with a slight wheeze, looking daggers at Malfoy.  
  
"I suppose we're close," sniffed Lucius, his breath coming in gulps, the fair skin of his face a blotchy red.  
  
Snape's face was nearly as pale as ever, except for the thinnest touch of color in his sallow cheeks, but he still looked worse off than the other man. "Better try then, hadn't we?" he choked. Now his arm and his lungs were both burning.  
  
"Well, all right then." Malfoy raised his wand and looked disgustedly at Snape, who was still seated on the ground. "I hope you don't expect to appear at a Death Eater's meeting like... that!" he exclaimed.  
  
"My wand; I don't believe it," hissed Snape, staring at a splintered mess in his hand. "I don't believe it!" he rose immediately, forgetting how much his muscles ached. "I've been cruciatified, knocked down, thrown about, and generally humiliated and now-now!-One insignificant fall and the damned thing breaks into pieces!" he snarled, gesturing angrily towards Malfoy with the ruined wand.  
  
"For God's sake, Severus! You've never had any luck, so don't think of blaming it on me!" Lucius snapped.  
  
"And how am I to apparate to this meeting, if I don't have a wand?!" Snape demanded through his yellowed, clenched teeth. His dark brows overshadowed his frighteningly enraged face, but Malfoy was obviously unimpressed, and he merely glared back.  
  
"Severus, you fool! I'll apparate you there myself." He grabbed Snape roughly by the arm and flicked his wand slightly. Nothing happened, and Malfoy wrinkled his nose. "I suppose this requires actual words, then," he said. "Aparecia Duo!" he shouted, repeating the motion with his wand, but nothing happened. Malfoy looked puzzled.  
  
"Obviously we haven't yet cleared the anti-apparition field," Snape said rudely, freeing himself from Lucius' grip.  
  
"On the contrary; I remember that forked tree in the distance. Crabbe was saying something crass about the way it was shaped..." Malfoy stopped there, the good breeding kicking in. Snape was hardly surprised to hear that the bulky Crabbe from Slytherin house had been there, and was mostly certain that it had been he, Crabbe, who sat on his legs. "We apparated even a bit further up the path, slightly closer to the Yard."  
  
"With two sharing the spell instead of one, even proximity to the field might have an effect," Snape angrily thought aloud.  
  
"Damn! How perfect," spat Malfoy, narrowing his light eyes angrily. "Come on then, Severus!" he commanded, taking off at a jog. Snape's stomach fell at the prospect of more unpleasant muscle activity, but he quickly followed, watching his robes to be certain they did not get in his way again.  
  
A few moments onward, Lucius called for a halt, and both men stopped short. "Aparecia Duo!" shouted Malfoy, wand held high. But again, nothing happened. "It should be working!" Snape growled angrily. "Malfoy, release my arm! It's bad enough already with the mark burning as it is."  
  
"Would you rather I took you by neck?" Lucius said threateningly.  
  
"If I had my wand, Malfoy, you albino toad...!"  
  
"If you hadn't crushed it, you clumsy, slimy little maggot, you would have it! If you hadn't destroyed it, I tell you, we'd have already disapparated!" Lucius growled and wrung his hands, looking both angry and worried. "We've already taken too long! The Dark Lord will be livid."  
  
"There isn't anything else we can do," Snape said with defensive ferocity, suddenly aware of the danger. "Just shut our mouths and get going. Come on!" Now the thought of facing the Dark Lord's wrath gave his feet wings, and he ignored the complaints of his legs as he fell behind Lucius, who was quicker, and crested the next low hill over which ran the dirt road.  
  
Coming down the other side, Snape was startled to see a muggle man at the side of the road, leaning on some sort of rusty muggle vehicle and eating some kind of sandwich. Beside him, two shaggy sheep hounds lay in the stubbly grass, the brown one scratching an itch on its foreleg with its teeth, the gray one lolling its tongue out of its mouth and watching them with interest. Through unspoken agreement, both Snape and Malfoy stopped dead.  
  
"A muggle!" said Malfoy with vicious delight, not bothering to speak quietly. The msn looked up at them. "And all alone. Watch me, Severus. Have you ever attempted the Imperiatus curse?"  
  
"I know it," Snape said, "but I haven't used it."  
  
Malfoy smiled in response and pointed his wand at the farmer. "Imperio!" he shouted forcefully. The bolt from his wand struck the man, but seemed to have little effect other than to clear his face of expression. Snape watched intently.  
  
"Kill the mut," Malfoy told the empty-eyed man. "The... grey one. Doesn't matter how, really," he looked at Snape conciliatorily.  
  
The man turned with a naturalness that made it appear it had all been his own idea, and from the back of the vehicle took a long muggle gun. He cocked the trigger and aimed it at the head of the unsuspecting dog, which had turned its head to watch its master and to sniff the scent of the weapon.  
  
Snape winced at the "blam!" of the gun going of. When he refocused upon the scene, he saw that the grey dog was lying still upon the ground. The other had fled to a few meters off, and had turned to watch with its ears flattened and its tail between its legs.  
  
"Don't move!" Lucius called quickly while the farmer still had the gun to his shoulder. "It isn't really any fun," he grinned at Snape, "unless you say the counter-curse just after and allow them to see what they've done." He waved his wand and mumbled something, and the farmer began to move again, lowering the gun instantly and stepping back.  
  
"What's this?" he said, just loudly enough for the dark wizards to hear. "What the bloody hell just happened??" A pool of red was beginning to spread beneath the dog's head, and the man covered his mouth in bewilderment. For a moment he looked at the gun in his hand, but then, seeming to have realized something, he rounded on the two black-robed men on the hill.  
  
"You've done somethin', I know yeh have!" he cried, pointing a shaky finger at the dog. "you two... some ov 'em blasted sorcerer things!" He raised his gun to shoot at them, but apparently there had been only a single bullet loaded, for there was no result when he pulled the trigger. He looked at it in anger as Malfoy laughed airily at his misfortune. Snape merely observed.  
  
"Dorian, sic 'em!" he called to the remaining dog, who had mostly recovered from his fright and now came racing back towards the two wizards.  
  
" 'Sic em?' " repeated Malfoy carefully, his brow wrinkled thoughtfully. "Oh my. It appears I've been using the wrong spell. It wasn't 'Aparecia duo.' It should have been "ApareCICUM.' "  
  
"Well, then.!" prompted Snape, glaring venomously.  
  
"Just a moment," said Lucius calmly, pointing his wand at the dog. "Avada Kedavra!" he shouted, releasing a red bolt that caused the beast to keel over in mid-stride. Before the farmer could speak, Malfoy turned his wand upon him-"Avada Kedavra!"-and felled him with the killing curse as well.  
  
The natural silence of faint birds and softly rustling plant life lasted for only a moment before Malfoy spoke.  
  
"I'd have let you give it a try, but strange things can happen when one uses another wizard's wand," he explained. "I would be interested to know if you were able to perform the killing curse in a non life-threatening situation. As would our master."  
  
"That's quite all right," Severus said, his emotions unsure of what to be. He had expected to experience remorse at the muggle's death, but it had been so easy! He felt sorrier for the first dog than he did for the farmer. And he didn't feel terrible about that. "I tried it once before, on Orpheus. The cat. You remember him, I trust?"  
  
Malfoy smiled, amused. "Yes! The scraggly little bugger. I seem to recall wondering what had become of him. Germanicus Hiverd's sparrow had grown suspiciously fearless."  
  
"Yes. Though he was dying anyway; that might have made it a bit easier." Snape looked back towards the farmer, then towards the bloodied grey dog, but could conjure no regret. He hadn't known them; they might never have lived, and what would have been the difference to him?  
  
"It should matter," he said aloud, thoughtfully, as though gently chastising his own lack of emotion.  
  
"What's this?" Malfoy asked, tilting his head.  
  
"Talking to myself," said Snape firmly, stowing the useless wand that he had thus far neglected to put away. "Shall we go on?" He clapped a hand to Malfoy's shoulder in preparation.  
  
"Certainly. Aperecicum Duo!" Lucius shouted, and with a crack, they disapparated, leaving nothing behind but a dead man and his dogs lying quietly in the road.  
  
***  
  
What do you think? This chapter is slightly weird, I know. It's especially strange to think of Snape and Lucius actually running. But when you've got the Dark Lord for a boss, you learn to shake a leg when he tells you to hurry up.  
  
By next chapter they are at last going to be attending the Death Eaters meeting. If I've screwed up the characters or anything, tell me what it is I've done and I will try to write the next chapter better and then fix this one. Thanks! 


	6. The Death Eater's Meeting

Author's Note: First: thanks to Mordred for the encouragement! Now: here is chapter 6, but it's definitely not my favorite chapter. It's ok, I suppose, but the future chapters should be a great deal more interesting. At least the situation presented here was good for introducing some of the other Death Eaters who will figure more prominently in the story's future. Voldemort is kind of annoying today, which sort of bugs me, but he's evil, so I'll let it slide. Anyway, on to chapter 6.  
  
*** Like most of Knockturn Alley, the room into which they apparated was cramped, dark, dingy, and slightly smelly. Neither the weak daylight coming in the windows nor the light of the candelabras was strong enough to win over the gloom of the place.  
  
"Exactly where are we, Lucius?" Snape asked in lowered voice, looking about the room. The confusing clutter of dark magic paraphernalia drew his eyes about the little space, focusing occasionally upon objects of particular interest. Shrunken heads peered out through the window display, staring across the street at shop with the words "Borgin and Burkes" painted upon its own front window. Like the rest of the items in the room, the heads were covered with dust and obviously had not been touched for ages.  
  
"Not now, Severus," Malfoy hissed. The Dark Lord awaits." He swished his wand through the air. "Portus Aprecio," he said quietly, and upon one wall a pile of junk faded out of existence, uncovering a door of heavy reddish wood.  
  
"Useful spell," Severus commented in a whisper.  
  
"Our master's own design," Malfoy whispered back, sounding rather proud. "Quickly, find your mask and put up your hood!" he instructed, fishing his mask from inside his robes. Snape quickly followed suit with his black face covering.  
  
"Oh no," Lucius exclaimed softly as he pulled his hood around his face. "I'd forgotten; you'll be in need of a Death Eater's attire. The master prefers that we all look the same." He reached again into his robes and took out a small, polished wood box with a silver snake and skull inlaid on the lid. Malfoy touched his wand to it and with a click it opened, revealing a tiny doll-sized mask, cloak, and robe that looked exactly like the ones that Malfoy wore. "I saved Kerchel's uniform for you." Holding the box in his right hand, he removed the robe first and shook it out quickly. As Snape watched, it expanded to a wearable size, and Lucius handed it to him hastily.  
  
"Just put it on over your regular clothes," he whispered, shaking out the cloak and then the mask and passing them to Snape, who had just finished pulling the robe over his head. As quickly as he could, he threw the cloak about his shoulders and fastened it at the neck with its attached silver snake clasp. The mask he placed over his face-it fit over his sharp features with a definitely magical snugness- and over his head he pulled the black hood. The only difference between he and Malfoy was now height- Snape was taller- and style of footwear.  
  
"Finished," Snape whispered through the mouth hole of the mask, and Malfoy nodded his well-disguised head.  
  
The two Death Eaters approached the door, and Malfoy reached out a smooth hand to grip the handle. He slowly pulled the door open just wide enough to fit through and entered silently, his hand motioning for Snape to follow. He could not see around Malfoy to look inside, and all that he could do was catch the door and squeeze through behind his Death Maker.  
  
The room was no wider than the Slytherin common rooms at Hogwarts, but its gray-green walls stretched upwards almost twice as high. Reflecting light off of the hard wood floors, a few dozen candles burnt silently in a chandelier which seemed to float in midair in the center of the room, illuminating the black-clad figures grouped there.  
  
They stood in a ring around someone standing in the middle, almost unquestionably Voldemort himself. Snape could not tell through the mask and layers of black whether Lucius was apprehensive, but as for himself, he felt a cold dread. The mercy of nature had allowed him to forget the feel of the pain itself, but he remembered clearly that the cruciatus curse had been horrible.  
  
"Malfoy," said a demonic voice from the direction of the crowd. It could be none other than Lord Voldemort speaking. "Snape. Come here."  
  
As Lucius strode up to the ring of Death Eaters, Severus a few wary steps behind, the circle opened like a set of human double-doors. A few of the men inclined their heads towards Malfoy in greeting as he hurried by them and into the center, where Snape could now be certain Voldemort awaited them.  
  
"My Lord," said Malfoy sincerely, kneeling before his snake faced master. Uncertainly, Snape knelt down beside him.  
  
"You are late," said the Dark Lord blandly, allowing the two Death Eaters to remain prostrate before him.  
  
"Yes, our apologies, My Lord. We encountered difficulties-" began Malfoy, his eyes darting nervously over the hem of Voldemort's robes.  
  
"I don't see what was so difficult about a simple apparition spell," said the Dark Lord, and the re-formed circle of death eaters sniggered accordingly. "What was the trouble, then? Look at me, Lucius." Malfoy raised his masked head slowly.  
  
"Snape cracked his wand," he began accusingly, glancing at the man beside him, "so we had to get further away from the Yard in order to apparate both of us." Snape glared at Malfoy through his eye holes, but dared not call the Dark Lord's attention to him.  
  
"Ah, a half-truth," Voldemort smirked. "Would you care to amend your excuse?" The Death Eaters fidgeted in their ranks, whispering among themselves in amused tones. The Dark Lord's fingers, Snape could see, were caressing the wand with anticipation.  
  
"Forgot the spell, Lord, and I do regret it," Malfoy said hastily. "But we met a muggle, my lord! And killed it! His dogs, as well!"  
  
"I see. Although with you, Malfoy, torturing muggles is not exactly the thirteenth labor of Hercules." Again a tittering was heard from the surrounding Death Eaters. Voldemort turned his gaze upon Snape, and despite the fact that the Death Eater's eyes were fixed upon the floor, he could feel the Dark Lord looking him over.  
  
"What did you think of it, Snape?" Voldemort queried conspiratorially. "Look at me."  
  
Snape raised his head and merely stared for a moment before answering. By candlelight, he realized, the creature was even more grotesque than when seen by moonlight; more obviously a perversion of humanity. His gray-pink skin hugged his misshapen skull like a silk mask, occasionally wrinkling, reptile-like, when his features moved or his head turned. The few small vestiges of a recognizably human appearance- the thin remnant of lips, the protrusion of a pair of shriveled, twisted ears, the fuzz of black hair- made him more fearsome than a wholly alien form. Snape held his breath for a moment to keep from shuddering like some silly child.  
  
"I-thought it was... interesting," he said, not really lying. After all, it was an event that was likely to stick in his mind...  
  
"Really?" Voldemort said, smirking. "Because it seems to me, you felt a bit... sorry for him?"  
  
"No," replied Snape resentfully, "A bit for the dog. Not for the man."  
  
"That's better," said Voldemort, flashing his nasty grin to the circle of Death Eaters. "The basest mongrel can stir in our hearts what a thousand muggle deaths cannot. I am glad to hear it. It is always a sad thing to find that a promising follower has no stomach for the work we do." Snape's body relaxed when he realized that he had passed one test today, at least.  
  
"Now get up, both of you!" commanded Voldemort, and the men before him rose quickly to their feet at his command. Snape watched, interested, as Voldemort lifted his wand and began to trace a collection of fiery letters into the air. It was backward writing to Malfoy, Snape, and half of the other Death Eaters, but it was still readable with a little effort.  
  
" 'Aparecicum Duo?' " Snape wondered quietly aloud with a look at Malfoy, as Voldemort finished the second word. Lucius nodded curtly, without turning away from his master.  
  
"This is for you, Malfoy," said the Dark Lord brightly, and he made a stabbing motion with his wand. Instantly the letters rushed forward at Lucius, blazing hellishly and shrinking as they moved. Snape wondered, for a moment, if they were meant only to scare the Death Eater, and would fizzle out before reaching him.  
  
He realized he'd been wrong when the flaming words collided with Malfoy's face and bore him to the floor. He rose immediately, his expression slightly dazed, but upon his forehead the words "Aparecicum Duo" were settling into his flesh with a satisfied sizzle. Malfoy clapped a hand to the obviously painful injury and stood up with a hurt look.  
  
The Dark Lord leveled the cruciatus curse at Snape before his new victim was aware that he was to be targeted, though he might have guessed he would be next, if he had found the time to consider it.  
  
Snape kept his feet for a whole two or three seconds of head splitting pain before collapsing onto his hands and knees. The eerie, half scream, half moans coming from his mouth ended a few seconds afterward with the dissipation of the torturous pain.  
  
"I expect punctuality from all of you," snarled the Dark Lord as he pointed his wand about the circle. "And I will punish stupidity accordingly! Both of you: find your places!" If he had not spoken in such a very frightening voice, he would have sounded exactly like a rather foul grammar school teacher.  
  
Snape pushed himself upward with difficulty; he was getting tired of falling, but this time felt it would be wise not to mention it. He supposed that he was getting the point, at least: the Dark Lord could tell when you were lying, and he would punish anything he did not like. Snape's head cleared as he staggered after Malfoy to a place in the circle that opened up for them and turned dizzily about just before the Dark Lord again began to speak.  
  
"There is not very much to discuss, today. I have called this meeting for two purposes: first, to remind all of you that the day is quickly approaching when we will make ourselves know to the world. My faithful servant Rookwood informs me that a few highly placed ministry officials have demonstrated sympathy for our cause. They will reveal themselves at the proper moment, though they do not yet wear my mark. Correct, Rookwood?"  
  
"Yes, my Lord," said a man standing next to Lucius. Snape looked around at the man who had spoken the words so calmly, recognizing the name from school. Augustus Rookwood had been a Ravenclaw in Lucius' year-two years ahead of Snape- and had seemed such an ordinary, rule-abiding boy. Severus reminded himself that he, too, had generally played by the rules, and wondered how many other Death Eaters happened to be former classmates.  
  
"My second reminder is to keep up the work that I have assigned you. Malfoy, Macnair-your lot are to continue the attacks on loan muggles or muggles in small groups. Have patience; we will graduate to mudbloods very soon."  
  
"How soon?" asked a nasal voice.  
  
"Whenever I say, Macnair!" snarled the Dark Lord, pointing his wand at the speaker, who raised his hands defensively. Voldemort lowered the wand after a moment, and Macnair visibly relaxed. "No more interruptions today! Mulciber, Jugson: you two will be visiting any ministry officials whom Rookwood and Avery cannot convince to support us. I'm afraid there will be quite a few of those," he finished, narrowing his eyes at one of the Death Eaters.  
  
"I am trying, Master," mumbled the man, bowing his head slightly. Voldemort turned away, disgusted. "The rest of you will report to the men whose names I have mentioned. Any of you who I have not yet made use of, your time will come." He smiled around the circle again, apparently without noticing the sour look in Severus' eyes.  
  
"We have two new members with us, today," said Voldemort after a moment's silence, "for whom this meeting is the first. These men and their Death Makers will remain with me. The rest of you will promptly return to wherever you came from. Go!"  
  
"Thank you, Lord!" said a chorus of men and, Snape realized, at least a few women. The majority of the Death Eaters dissaparated with a loud, cracking sound, none of them eager to remain behind with Voldemort in the emptying room. Only four men held their places: Malfoy, Snape, Augustus Rookwood, and a slightly twitchy Death Eater with nervous hands.  
  
Rookwood, a man of small stature, looked at Snape with what appeared to be curiosity. "I thought you were bringing in Pettigrew, Lucius?" he said interestedly, addressing Malfoy.  
  
"The little bastard never showed up at the meeting place," Malfoy answered with a sneer in his tone. "I waited nearly an hour before I caught sight of Severus sulking in the corner, and thought to myself that he would be at least as fitting a candidate as that blubbering little man. You remember Severus Snape, of course."  
  
"Hardly. A Slytherin, weren't you?" asked Rookwood. Snape nodded impassively. He could tell that the former Ravenclaw intended to say more, but by that time the room had cleared, and Voldemort's attention was fixed on the four men.  
  
"A Snape and a Karkaroff. Hmm," he said. "Karkaroff; as I mentioned before, is not a name I am familiar with." He looked the anxious man up and down.  
  
"I was just visiting, at the Ministry, and I met Augustus, and he- he gave me a bit of paper and said if I hated mudbloods I could help him out," Karkaroff sputtered with a very slight, unidentifiable foreign accent. "He said- he said 'come,' so I came..."  
  
"If you are pure of blood and pure of purpose, that is all that matters," the Dark Lord broke in. "Karkaroff, to the center of the room. I have already had a chat with Master Snape. He will join you."  
  
Voldemort fingered his wand. "I have other business," he said lazily, "but you four shall remain here. I expect both of these men to be proficient with the use of the Three Great Curses by the next time we meet," he said pointedly to the two Death Makers.  
  
"Yes, Lord," said Rookwood quickly.  
  
"Yes, of course Master-though Snape will be in need of a wand..." Lucius reminded the Dark Lord with a trace of uncertainty.  
  
"Then take him to get a new one!" Voldemort hissed, sounding as snake-like as he appeared. "And then return here!"  
  
"Yes Lord," said Malfoy, relieved. The Dark Lord dissaparated without speaking another word, his exit noticeably lacking the tell-tale "crack!" of air and magic that followed the apparition spells of every other wizard Snape had heard of.  
  
The disappearance of Lord Voldemort put everyone at their ease, and Karkaroff actually sighed with relief.  
  
"I though he was going to do the cruciatus on me!" he said, smiling at Snape. "It looked like it hurt." With the threat gone, the accent had disappeared entirely.  
  
"How perceptive of you," Snape retorted.  
  
"Now, now, Severus," said Malfoy, mockingly. "Save the attacks; you'll have a chance to tap that healthy anger as soon as you get a wand."  
  
"What are you waiting for, then?" asked Rookwood with friendly impatience. He removed his mask and pushed back his hood to reveal a round, Italianate face framed by caterpillar eye-brows and sleek black hair that was plaited down his back. Snape vaguely remembered him from transfiguration classes.  
  
"So it's alright if we take off all of this?" Karkaroff demanded, pushing back the hood before anyone could answer. From under the mask, a long-faced man with a thin goatee appeared.  
  
"It doesn't really matter at the moment," said Lucius, and removed his disguise with a nod to Severus, who sullenly followed suit.  
  
"I hope you don't mind if Karkaroff and I take a look in Borgin and Burkes while we wait for you? There's nothing to do here, after all," Rookwood reasoned.  
  
"Not at all, Augustus. We'll alert you when we return. Come, Severus."  
  
Snape followed Lucius through the doorway, into the dusty shop and turned his head to watch as the door changed again to resemble a wall obscured by rubbish, through which Karkaroff and Rookwood entered the room unawares.  
  
In silence, all four men removed their Death Eater attire, and Snape watched as each one took out one of the little wooden boxes and easily fit their clothing inside.  
  
"Severus, here is your Cloak Chest," said Malfoy, holding out one of the boxes for him to take.  
  
"Just how does this work?" Snape asked, inspecting the lid. "I don't have a wand, if you'll remember.  
  
"I'm afraid you won't be able to open it without one," said Malfoy with a shake of his head. "It's spelled to respond only to the wand of the first person to open it, and yours is brand new."  
  
"Evan Rosier makes them," volunteered Rookwood as he pushed his mask into the little box. "Quite ingenious. He's a very loyal man, and very odd. But he is an excellent craftsman, in spells and beautiful objects."  
  
"Avery told me that everyone here has a purpose," said Karkaraoff importantly. "Rosier's here for the spells, Macnair for the disposal of muggles. He said I'm here to represent my country in the coming great war, and that I have demonstrated a talent for the Dark magics. What's your reason?"  
  
"Potions, of course. And a thorough knowledge of the Dark Arts. Have you ever used the killing curse, Karkaroff?" Snape snarled. He wished he had a wand to brandish at the impertinent man.  
  
"Don't listen to him!" said Malfoy sternly, turning to Karkaroff. "He's not as exceptional as he'd like to think."  
  
"I have a feeling that it wouldn't be very difficult for the smallest child with this one as a practice partner!"  
  
"Steady on, Severus!" said Rookwood lightly. "We'll find you a victim soon enough! I thought at first you'd be with either Rosier in spellmaking or me and Avery in intelligence, but I detect a distinctly vicious streak! Malfoy, I think he may be one of your lads after all!"  
  
"Yes, well, the Dark Lord will make his decision on both of them very shortly. It isn't our place to say," Malfoy sniffed, smoothing his brocaded green robes.  
  
"Do I have a choice?" asked Snape with trepidation.  
  
"You can try to sway him, but if you aren't exceptional at your post, he will quickly make a change." Rookwood shrugged sympathetically. "It's all for the best."  
  
"Perhaps," mumbled Snape. "Should I leave these clothes in here?"  
  
"Yes, put them anywhere. They'll get a bit dirty, perhaps, but you can just give them a wash when you return home." Malfoy crossed his arms, waiting as Snape found a relatively convenient corner and dumped the pile of robe, cloak, and mask. "Finished? Good."  
  
Snape sniggered at Lucius as he moved towards the front door.  
  
"What is it?" demanded Malfoy, whirling about suspiciously.  
  
"Do you really want to parade about Diagon Alley with the Dark Lord's little 'gift?' " he smirked.  
  
"What? Oh, good heavens-" Lucius put up a hand to feel the little furrows of the letters in his flesh. Karkaroff hooted and put a hand to his mouth.  
  
"Here, Lucius," laughed Rookwood. "I've got a spell that will conceal it until you can get your hands on some burn-salve." He poked his wand in the direction of Malfoy's forehead and mumbled something under his breath, and the words faded into the flesh of Malfoy's forehead.  
  
"If you're decent, now, Malfoy, I'm rather anxious to procure a wand," said Snape, striding over to open the door. With a scowl upon his face, Malfoy brushed past him and out into the empty alleyway.  
  
"Thank you, Severus," beamed Rookwood, taking advantage of the opened door. Snape let go of the handle and stepped through before Karkaroff had the chance to slip past, but he caught the door before it could shut and shot Snape a smug grin.  
  
"We'll see you shortly," said Malfoy, sweeping down the alleyway pretentiously. Snape glared at the back of his head and followed.  
  
***  
  
And that's chapter 6! Next chapter should prove more interesting. Anyway. If you liked, review. If you didn't, please review and tell me why. Thank you for reading! 


	7. A New Wand

Author's Note: Well, from going on a little sojourn into the Harry Potter books and looking around the web, I have found out that the Dark Mark is on the left forearm of the Death Eaters. I put it on the right upper arm, as though my brain thought it was some sort of "I heart Voldemort" design! Ah, well. I'll put it in the correct place from now on, and I'll go back and edit the offending chapters later on. I have already found a few things that need changing in the first few chapters (repetition of words and occasionally sentence structure being the major offenders), so I'll mess around with it whenever I get the time or the urge. The next thing I'm going to concentrate on is finding out if there are any descriptions of when Voldemort and his Death Eaters first made themselves known to the world. For that, it looks like I'm going to have to do an online search, since I have no idea where in the books that might have been mentioned! I read books through quickly and forget them quickly. Which makes rereading a lot of fun, but is not an asset to a person who is trying to write fanfiction! My imagination doesn't help, as it has been known to warp scenes into how I think they should be rather than exactly how they have been described. I live in mortal dread of stealing someone's ideas because they dissolve into my mind soup. So don't hate me! I've got a lot o' stuff cookin' in thar.  
  
And now... chapter 6! Pretend you're in a restaurant: READ the menu (aka the story), ENJOY the meal (still aka my story) and then REVIEW the service (the way the story was written or the way the plot is going or whatever) by leaving a TIP (as in, what I should work on, what facts are screwy; but praise is just as welcome, if you find it in you!). Ok, ok. And NOW... chapter 6! For real!  
  
***  
  
Ollivanders' shop had been unchanged for so long that to the wizarding community of Britain, its existence was like the presence of air: no one gave it a thought unless they found themselves in need of it. The same wrinkled little man that today stood behind the counter, polishing a wand, was the same one that had served Snape almost ten years ago, and his mother said at the time that she recognized the man from her own first visit.  
  
"Good day, Mr. Ollivander," said Lucius briskly. "How have you been lately?"  
  
"Oh, business is steady, as it always is," the old man answered with a crooked little grin. "How is that wand of yours, Mr. Malfoy? Fourteen and three-quarters inches, isn't it? Pine wood, core of unicorn hair." He looked dreamily into space, digging into old memories. "Useful for illusions. I hope it has served you well?"  
  
"Yes, my wand is just fine," said Malfoy impassively. "It's Severus here who needs your attention. He, unfortunately, has ruined his first wand."  
  
"Have you, now?" asked Ollivanders with half-disguised dismay. As it is for most craftsmen, hearing of the destruction of a work was like a blow to the gut. "Severus... Severus Snape, I think?"  
  
"That's right," Snape assured him blandly.  
  
"Oh! You had a very nice wand, very lovely." Ollivander looked quite saddened by the thought of the broken work of art. "Exquisite work. All of my pieces are of the finest quality. May I- may I see it?" he asked, as though requesting to see the earthly remains of a departed friend. Snape gladly withdrew the splintered main body and a finger-sized wooden shard. He was glad to get them out of his pocket before he fell to the ground again and perhaps stabbed himself on the dangerous ends.  
  
"Oh..." said the shopkeeper with quiet sadness, cradling the pieces. "Yes... holly oak, hair of unicorn, fourteen inches long... At least, it was." He looked up sharply at Snape, whose eyes narrowed unpleasantly. "Irreparable damage, Mr. Snape. You'll be in need of a new wand. I only hope you've learned your lesson-"  
  
"Yes, fine. I've learned that running is dangerous. Thank you. One more reason not to do it on a regular basis!"  
  
"Severus, have you no manners?" demanded Lucius sharply, his eyes flashing blue-blooded displeasure.  
  
"Not many," Snape retorted, and folded his arms crossly. He wished that Malfoy had not accompanied him to the shop. His very presence made Snape's skin tingle with the desire to be away from Lucius, from Death Eaters, from everything. He had not changed much since his school days: he still much preferred to go it alone.  
  
"No need to work yourself into a tizzy, Mr. Malfoy," Ollivander interrupted before Lucius had a chance to worsen the situation. "I'd be angry, too, if I'd just lost a wand," he offered by way of explanation, but the glance he threw at Snape told his customer that without a doubt his only reason for mediating was to keep the two men from making a scene. "Let me see what I have that might fit..."  
  
Snape glared at the ceiling as the old man ran his hand over the boxes stacked on the shelves behind the counter. His gnarled fingers paused at one box, and he thought for a few seconds before moving on.  
  
"What exactly are you looking for?" Snape asked after a few moments. "I've an appointment to get to, if you don't mind." Lucius was giving him the evil eye.  
  
"If you'll wait just a moment," Ollivander began, his hand still dancing over the boxes. "I am looking for... This!" Triumphantly he pulled out a long box in a shade of warm yellow and delightedly showed it to Severus, who regarded it with raised eyebrows.  
  
Grinning, the old man lifted the lid and removed a long, thin rod of a deep red color. It was well-polished, as was all of Ollivander's handiwork, and it looked at least as long as the broken wand had been.  
  
"Mahogany, fourteen inches, unicorn hair core," recited the wand-maker. "Not quite what you are used to, I think. But I have found that, as much as it pains me to see one of my creations destroyed, oftentimes when a wizard loses a wand, it happens for a reason." He looked Snape squarely in the eye.  
  
"What reason do you have to believe that?" asked Snape with a touch of interest. He took the wand offered to him and looked it over, turning it in his fingers. He liked the feel of its heaviness in his palm.  
  
When Ollivander did not answer right away, Snape took his opportunity and swished the wand expertly through the air in a tight, curling pattern. When it stopped, pointing like an extension of his index finger, its tip was pointed straight at the shopkeeper. To Severus' surprise, an odd change was developing in the vendor's kindly face. His peculiar little smile twisted into an open-mouthed, animal-like grimace, his cheeks sank, and his eyes became deep, hollow, and deathly. Amazed and appalled, Severus turned to look at Lucius, only to find that the other Death Eater was glancing from Ollivander to Snape with a look of unperturbed condescension. Training his eyes once more upon the shopkeeper, Snape was even more surprised to find that his victim was looking ordinary again, except for the fact that he was holding a hand to his head.  
  
"Yes. Mahogany," said Mr. Ollivander with a knowing smile. "A great channeler of human energies. Paired with unicorn hair, very good for working mind tricks."  
  
"Mind tricks!" scoffed Severus. He was beginning to miss his old wand. Ollivander had said it was "perfect for curses." Just the sort of thing that would have helped him most right now! "Are you certain the old wand can't be repaired? Or perhaps, could you find another very much like it?"  
  
"Mr. Snape, you know very well that neither you nor I chose the wand. The wand chooses the wielder."  
  
"Yes, but you see a wand has already 'chosen me,' except now it's broken, and you are telling me I must take this one? It's nothing like the old one- "  
  
"Wands are his business, Severus," Lucius put in. "Just pay the man whatever amount you owe and let's be off!"  
  
"Hold on a moment," Ollivander said brusquely, pulling down from the shelf the box he had previously considered. "Here. Holly oak, unicorn hair, thirteen and three quarters inches. Closest thing I've got to the one you had. Try it out! See for yourself!" he said, exchanging the mahogany wand for this new one.  
  
With a sneer, Snape mimicked his previous wand movement, again pointing the wand at Ollivander. As he watched with a growing smirk, the old man's face began to contort, and-  
  
"What is that vile stench?" asked Ollivander, sniffing the air and making a disgusted face. Snape's heart fell. "I'm sure you wouldn't believe me about the smell," Ollivanders said. He wrinkled his nose. "But if nothing else has happened, I think even you, Mr. Snape, will have to agree that this wand is not meant for you." He took the wand from Severus' unresisting hands and handed him the one of mahogany.  
  
"Good. I'm glad we've settled your dispute so quickly," said Lucius.  
  
"Indeed!" said Ollivander with a smile, accepting the gold galleons Snape was placing in his hands. "I know that wand is right for you, Mr. Snape. There is no doubt."  
  
"There is always doubt," Snape snorted, putting away his leather coin bag.  
  
"It hardly matters one way or another. Many thanks, Mr. Ollivander. Come, Severus!" Lucius finished, and exited the shop.  
  
"Thank you for patronizing Ollivander's," the old man smiled. "Enjoy your purchase!"  
  
"Er... Yes. Thank you," said Snape through gritted teeth, and quickly tucked the wand away before dashing out onto Diagon Alley.  
  
The street was full of wizards and witches window-shopping and simply strolling along. Over London, the skies were for the most part clear today, and the sun of afternoon-going-on-evening gilded the heads of the people and shop fronts. Scanning the scene, Severus found Lucius Malfoy standing, aloof, to the right of Ollivander''s store.  
  
"I don't see what made you feel you ought to act so exceptionally vulgar," said Malfoy, starting to walk without looking at Severus. "Ollivander is one of the last surviving pure-bloods of that name."  
  
"He supplied me with a wand that does not suit my purposes." Snape grumbled. "The old one was perfect just as it was!"  
  
"Well then you shouldn't have broken it," Malfoy reminded him calmly. "That man knows exactly what he's doing." Snape remained silent. "Come, now. Stop here; there's a book of spells I'm thinking of purchasing."  
  
At Malfoy's request, the two men turned into the shop under the title "Flourish and Blott's." The interior was cheery and warm, with books covering nearly every surface, and the free spaces devoted to inks, quills, and parchment in dozens of varieties. A few wizards and a couple of witches were quietly browsing the sections beneath the little signs declaring such categories as "cooking spells," "encyclopædias" and "fashion," among many others.  
  
"Wait out here, Severus," said Malfoy quickly, "I must speak with someone in the back, but I'll return shortly," and he glided away without waiting for a response.  
  
"Well," said Snape softly, looking hungrily at the bound knowledge all about him. He loved books, and always had; particularly spellbooks, but he was glad to read just about anything. He wondered if he could use any more volumes on curses, now that he was a Death Eater under Lord Voldemort's command, but was disappointed to realize that he had nearly everything for sale under the curses section. There had to be something he hadn't yet bought!  
  
A book of misty blue caught his eye amongst the dearth of binding in red, black, and green, and knowing that he owned nothing like it, he picked it up. "The Art of Lying and Catching Others At It," was the title, and on the front cover, a middle-aged witch beckoned Snape forward, motioning for him to take a look. Without hesitation, he opened the book to the introduction and read the first passage.  
  
"Have you ever tried to lie to a friend, but been inexplicably found out? Do you often wish you could know for certain whether someone is in jest or in earnest? If the answer is 'yes,' then chances are good that you have never delved into the sorcery of occlumency and legilimency, although perhaps one of your acquaintances has! To keep one step ahead of the others, read this book and let Miss Finny teach you how to protect your mind from intrusion and slip into other's thoughts. You will be on top of the world!"  
  
Snape didn't know what to make of this "Miss Finny," but the promises she made were enough to convince him to purchase his find. That, coupled with Ollivander's assurance that his new wand was "good for mind tricks." As a man of magic, himself, he was more than a little prepared to believe that there were no such things in life as coincidences. He hurried up to the register to pay for the little book, saying a little prayer of thanks to his mother for furnishing him enough gold to allow him to cover the cost of living... and reading.  
  
"All right. Finished," said Malfoy, striding out of the back of the shop as Snape exchanged coin for purchase at the register. "Ready to leave, Severus?"  
  
"Now I am," he said, a shade less sullen than before. He tucked the little book into an inner pocket before Malfoy could ask him about it, and in turn he decided not to ask Lucius about his business in the back of the shop.  
  
In silence, the two men left the shop and walked at a leisurely pace to the entrance to Knockturn Alley. Snape knew that though the narrow street might at this time be free of shoppers, when night fell the Alley would be bustling with the darkest witches and wizards in Britain.  
  
The two wizards stopped at Borgin and Burke's and peered in through the dirty window to see if they might discern the faces of the other two Death Eaters. In shades of gritty brown and urine yellow, Snape saw the face of Rookwood turn to look at him and Lucius. His eyes were wide with concern, and he mouthed something at them.  
  
"What did he say?" demanded Snape.  
  
"I couldn't tell," Lucius responded, and shook his head to indicate that they didn't understand. Inside the shop, Rookwood looked exasperated and moved to the door, which he opened.  
  
"What do you want, Augustus?" asked Malfoy. "Aren't you bringing Karkaroff to practice in the meeting room?"  
  
"Yes, but you'll have to wait a bit," said Rookwood uncomfortably. "We're trying to sort out a little incident..."  
  
"What's happened?"  
  
"Well, you see... Karkaroff's got himself trapped in a Ravenous Chair," Rookwood said apologetically, "and also, I think he's killed the shopkeeper."  
  
*** Remember, you've just eaten at a sit-down restaurant... Don't you want the cook to know how you liked the food? Anyway-hope you're enjoying it!  
  
Extra Important Author Note: Ok. Now I can firmly credit Knurd to Terry Pratchett thanks to LadyGame. I was thinking it was something out of Harry Potter (I was thinking they gave it to Winky that time she was drunk, but apparently, no, and Knurd is out of Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett. Whatever else there is (is it the Yard of No Mercy? I only named it that because it sounded wizardy... probably came out of a Terry Pratchett novel, then, too) I will just gloss over by saying "thank you to Terry Pratchett. My brain can't keep two writers about magic from squishing together into one big blob of magic story in my brain." Associative memories really suck, but as long as you admit it, I guess it shouldn't interfere too much with a fanfiction, of all things. If you're enjoying reading it, that's what matters most (in fanfiction). Luckily, I have no desire to write original character stories about magic thingies. The logistics are too complicated.  
  
Note about Rookwood: he's a little bit odd, I know. And I'm not trying to make him shout, I just was trying to get across the feeling that he's a little certain of himself, a little enthusiastic about himself, a little oblivious to the fact that there are other people with equally important things to say. Not that he doesn't listen, but he expects to be listened to, in the sense that he likes a direct response (not necessarily that you do what he asks). I'll try to cut back on his exclamation marks.  
  
Also: Wand cores. I was under the mistaken impression that Ollivander (I spelled his name wrong, but look! I've fixed it!) had only MENTIONED the cores. Having recaptured Sorcerer's Stone from my brothers, I find that, sadly, there seem to indeed be only three wand cores. How stinky! Dragging my feet in sadness, I have changed the wand cores to be one of the three. Sigh. I liked the idea of goblin hair and shaved hydra scale... Stupid Ollivander just doesn't have vision! ") Naw, I'm kidding. It's not like it's a major plot point, or anything, and it's Rowling's world, after all.  
  
Also also: I know Snape is in a weird mood. He's a weird guy, and in my mind more than a little temperamental. My take on it is that he's really just sort of caustic and even able to be a bit amused with life, right now. He's just been accepted into a secret association, people are talking to him in a way that is almost companionable, and he isn't used to any of it. Later in the story, I expect his personality to evolve a bit, into the dark Snape we know. I said he was "stone" in the beginning, but in this life of his, he still has a few hardening procedures to go through. Being a Death Eater is like that. But you'll just have to see!  
  
My apologies for confusion, annoyances, and any Terry Pratchetts mascarading as either JK Rowlings or Feronias. It is completely unintentional, and the result of my not having read either set of books for a long while, in addition to sheer stupidity. I hope this story's idiosyncrasies do not interfere with its likeability. I'm working on the next chapter right now... 


	8. Mr Burke and the Ravenous Chair

Author's note: This is my least favorite chapter so far; it's so full of dialogue. Apologies for that, but I found it necessary to slide into the plot. I tried to keep everybody in character, but it's a bit difficult when there is so much talking. To clarify things, if Snape seems not so cool and collected, if he seems less potently snappish and biting, this is intentional. I tried to let the Snape of the future shine through, but I also wanted to portray him as being even more socially ill-adapted than he is as an adult. He is a bit sulky as a youth, in my story, and I wanted to have him evolve somewhat to become the sharper, cleaner nasty that comes with a little bit of wisdom and rather a lot of growing up. If he seems completely out of character, I would love (gentle! wince) suggestions. I mean, tell me I beg you, just take into account that I am definitely trying. And: haven't fixed the Avada Kedavra light yet. But I will! Ok! Now read...

***

"That idiot!" Lucius snarled, racing up the steps with Severus still reluctantly at his heels. Rookwood obligingly held the door open until both men were safely inside, and then shut it with a snap and flipped the sign hanging in the window to read "closed" for anyone looking in.

"Where are they?" asked Snape curiously, looking around but seeing no sign of Karkaroff, the shopkeeper, or anything that looked remotely like a "ravenous chair." 

"They're in the back room, thank God," replied Rookwood, who was still looking worried. "Lucky for us, they've got a soundproof door, or I'm sure you'd have heard Karkaroff all the way to Diagon Alley." He strode to the opposite side of the service counter. "I've already put a silencing curse on him."

"Oh, wasn't that nice!" said Malfoy with frigid ferocity. "You couldn't manage to keep the stupid lout's wand under control, but at least you managed to not do it in silence! Do you have any idea—? No. Remain silent." Lucius banged open the door and swept into the room, eyes focused straight ahead. 

The ravenous chair was easily spotted. It sat, tall and regal, centered on the back wall, and struggling with silent, wide-eyed desperation upon its cushions of embroidered velvet was Igor Karkaroff. On the ground in front of him lay the spread-eagle body of a middle-aged man.

"I took his wand," said Rookwood a bit weakly, "After he, er, killed the fellow who runs the place." He held out Karkaroff's wand to Malfoy, who snatched it immediately without turning his head.

"One of you, figure out how to get him off that blasted thing," Malfoy commanded, gesturing at Karkaroff. As for himself, he stepped over to the body and knelt down beside it, feeling for a pulse.

The other two men approached the chair warily, and Snape glanced at Karkaroff's contorted face.

"Happen to have an idea on how to get this off his bum?" asked Rookwood, poking at the armrests upon which writhed the manacle-secured arms of the chair's victim. "He tried to stupefy it," he said with a gesture at Karkaroff, " but the spell just glanced off." 

"And then he tried the killing curse?" demanded Lucius, looking at Rookwood. 

"Well. Ah, yes, so it seems," he shrugged in sheepish accord. "Not quite sure, really. He was screaming bloody murder, so I heard him, at least. I was, er, out of the room at the time. I had to look for something to stop that chair!"

"Sheer stupidity," spat Malfoy. He smoothed back his hair as though doing so might erase the cause of his tension. "Help me to move this man out of the way," he ordered after a moment.

Severus glanced about the room as the two senior Death Eaters dragged the shopkeeper's limp body to the side of the room. Karkaroff was looking at him with wild, pleading eyes, but for the present Snape pointedly ignored him. He focused, instead, on the ground, where he saw a yellowed tag upon which a scrawled message had been written.

"Did anyone happen to notice _this_?" asked Snape with a feeling of delight, as he bent and picked it up. He rather enjoyed being the first to find such an obvious answer, and he waved it tauntingly in the air. "It says here, right at the top: 'Subduing the Ravenous Chair!' "

"Then go on, do what it says," suggested Rookwood,, before Malfoy had the chance to spit out another reply.

"Well, Severus?" said Lucius coldly.

"Right," said Snape lazily, pulling out his new wand. "A simple spell. Touch the wand to the victim's forehead—" and he did so. "Now: _Liberus__ Karkaroff_!" 

He removed his wand, frowning at the yellow tag, when he saw after a moment that Karkaroff had not been released.

"What's the problem?" Rookwood spoke up.

"At least he isn't wriggling any more in that disgusting manner," commented Lucius.

Severus looked up from the tag. Karkaroff was no longer strugglinf, and indeed, there were now only two problems for him to deal with: first, the chair still had him gripped tightly in its iron handcuffs and belt, and second, the man was still spelled mute. Coming up behind Snape, Rookwood waved his wand towards the captive man.

"—fraid you'd never get it to stop!" Karkaroff was saying as the curse lifted, breathing heavily and looking a bit sick. "It got through my robes—I, I think it has little teeth!" 

"An excellent description of a ravenous chair, Karkaroff," said Malfoy coldly. "I assume this is your first lesson on the matter? And of course, you will have no idea how to get out of that seat."

"I thought Snape had the instructions," said Karkaroff anxiously. 

"It seems that the spell only stops the chair from devouring you," Snape smiled as he inspected the tag, thinking to himself that he liked Karkaroff a lot better now that he was trapped in a seat capable of chewing him to bits. "There's nothing else."

"I suppose that makes sense," said Rookwood thoughtfully. "You wouldn't want anyone getting away after trying to use a chair like this without permission."

"Why would anyone besides Karkaroff try to use a... ravenous chair?" asked Snape, looking disdainfully at the chair's victim.

"I had no idea—!" began Karkaroff angrily, but Lucius put a firm hand on his arm.

"As you should know, Severus, if you had ever expressed an interest in our proud wizarding history, a true throne is not merely a status symbol. It is a conduit for the power to command."

"I know that," snapped Severus, "But that's not exactly a throne, is it? He said it's got teeth."

"Tiny ones. In the cushions!" confirmed Karkaroff, wide-eyed.

"Well, that's the point. A ravenous chair _is_ a throne, anointed by the backsides of royalty," explained Rookwood, his initial nervousness seeming to have lessened slightly. "After using the ravenous enchantment, the owner spells it not to eat its master. But anyone else is fair game."

"Indeed. It is fortunate for you, Karkaroff, that Borgin and Burke saw fit to leave the first spell." Malfoy's fists clenched, and he stared at Karkaroff with a glare almost as terrible as any Snape had managed. "Do you know who it was you killed today?"

"Was it... Mr. Burke, I think?"

"That's right. He _owns_ half of this shop. Mr. Burke and Mr. Borgin had an agreement with our Master to supply us with everything we need. Do you think Mr. Borgin will be very pleased when he returns to find his cousin murdered? Do you think he will be glad to offer out Master his services after finding out that the culprit is a servant of the Dark Lord?" Malfoy spoke softly, but as usual his tone commanded respect and even fear.

"It was an accident," Karkaroff whimpered. "I thought no one could block a Great Curse! I didn't think the chair's enchantments would be able to reflect _Avada__ Kedavra_!"

"You tried to kill a piece of furniture," said Malfoy, who was looking at Karkaroff as though he were mad. "The killing curse was made for living beings."

"It had teeth; it started eating through my robes. It _is_ alive!"

"Stop squealing," Lucius hissed, and Snape could see that once again his lips were beginning to twitch, although the cause this time was emotion rather than illness or pain. 

"They must have written down the spell _somewhere_, Lucius," said Rookwood consolingly. 

"Yes, but if we don't know exactly where it is, it could be days before we find it in this rubbish heap of a shop!"

"What if the three of us spelled it at all at once?" said Severus. "That could break through the enchantments."

"And if it worked, the chair would be destroyed," said Lucius. "That is absolutely out of the question. Everything in this room, Borgin and Burke have procured for our Master. I've been in here often enough to collect the orders."

Snape crossed his arms in thought for a moment. "Then I will shrink his arms to get him loose," he said with finality.

"Well," Lucius said, "you just try it. Almost certainly won't work, but you are very welcome to attempt it while we search for the second spell. Augustus, investigate Mr. Burke's robes thoroughly. I am going to look around the register desk." He stomped through the door and slammed it behind him.

Snape grumbled to himself that Lucius thought he knew everything, and looked very crossly at Karkaroff.

"If you don't mind, I think you should forget about a shrinking spell," Karkaroff warned apprehensively. "I'm sure the cuffs would only get tighter, and they already hurt."

"He's right Severus, I'd wager. You might check the shelves if you haven't any other ideas," said Rookwood pleasantly as he stuffed his hand into the inner robe pockets of the unconcerned Mr. Burke. 

With a an evil look designed especially to give the impression that searching for the spell was a waste of his valuable time, he halfheartedly began to scour the wooden bookcases that stood shoulder to shoulder along the right-hand wall. His fingers brushed over packaged animal parts and pushed the lids off of jars and boxes. He shook dusty spellbooks over the floor until yellowed pages drifted out, and he squinted at odd trinkets to call forth their secrets, but nothing seemed to hide a spell. No wonder, thought Severus. Who would hide such an important spell amongst such odds and ends? He would have put it somewhere safe, probably spelled it out of sight, maybe hidden it away in his pocket, if he kept it at all. He looked past Karkaroff, who was humming annoyingly and tapping his feet in time, to look questioningly at Rookwood.

"He's got enchanted pockets, I think," he said with an apologetic smile. "I keep reaching in, and there's more every time. No spell yet, though..."

A few minutes later, Malfoy burst into the room again, this time carrying a leather-bound book in his thin, white hand. From the year written on the spine, Severus determined that it was some sort of date book.

"Have you found it?" demanded Karkaroff, immediately ceasing his foot-tapping.

"Oh, no," said Malfoy. "I have simply discovered that Mr. Borgin will be away until tomorrow evening. They take it in turns to retrieve business orders from clients."

"Then we've got a bit of time," said Rookwood with some relief. 

"One day?" said Snape, annoyed. "There's hardly a chance of finding the spell if you don't know where to look! We might cut off his arms and save ourselves having to tell Voldemort."

"_Never call the Dark Lord by name_!" exclaimed Lucius at the same time that Rookwood burst out, "You can't call him that!" Severus rolled his eyes at both of them.

"Taking off my arms won't help," said Karkaroff quickly. "I don't think this thing is going to let go. Then you'd still have to explain why there are arms already on the armrests."

Severus looked him over. "Why ever would you ever to sit there to begin with?" he asked, disgusted.

"The chair's promises of power and prestige are more than sufficient to sway the desires of an empty-headed fool," Lucius answered for Karkaroff, glaring. 

"The shopkeeper told me I could try it out," Karkaroff defended himself. "It didn't look very fearsome, then."

"You shouldn't have kept on pestering him,"  said Rookwood, whose advice came much too late. "He didn't seem to like all those questions and no buying."

"Mr. Burke has always had a rather... interesting sense of humor," Malfoy said. "I imagine he would've liked the idea of introducing an annoying customer to this device. It seems that no-one here is blameless." 

"Then why don't we simply take the throne to the Meeting Room and tell Borgin what his partner tried to do?" asked Rookwood, who obviously thought his suggestion very reasonable. Snape looked to Malfoy for what he knew would be a swift and scathing response.

"Now why would that make any difference to Mr. Borgin? It wouldn't! His cousin is dead, and he will not like it. And if Mr. Borgin is troubled, the Dark Lord will be merciless."

"I think I smell the perfect opportunity to acquaint you with the Unforgivable curses, Karkaroff," Snape broke in with a sneer.

"Nonsense," snapped Lucius. "We will apply ourselves to finding a way out of this. If all goes well, the Dark Lord will have no reason to punish any of us." Snape had his doubts about that. 

"I'm sure our 'master' will find _some_ cause to use discipline," he snorted, and Lucius' unmoving face told him that he was probably correct.

"Then you _must_ find that spell," Karkaroff prodded, gripping the armrests. "He wouldn't hurt us, if you could just keep him from finding out about Mr. Burke."

The other three decided to ignore Karkaroff's last statement, but Rookwood stood up in response to the first. "It doesn't look as though we're going to find the spell at all, if we haven't already come across it," he said. "Seems to me we need a new tactic."

"Indeed," said Lucius, almost graciously. "In fact I have an idea. It will give Severus a chance to test out his abilities, as well as preserve our sanity." Snape looked at him sharply. What could he want that would require his attentions? Why were the corners of Lucius' mouth turning so coolly upward?

"An hour-made concealment potion," said Malfoy in such a casual manner that he actually emphasized the words instead of playing them down. Snape tried to look unimpressed, but his heart fluttered at Lucius' words. Such potions were notoriously difficult to make— not because they took a long time, or because they required rare ingredients, but because all the steps had to be completed in a span of mere minutes. The brewing of a concealment potion required a quick mind and a sure hand, and could easily be upset by the slightest hesitation. There was one other way to make a concealment potion, but that was difficult for exactly the opposite reasons. Either way, the results were extremely valuable, and were usually not even created unless for a specific purpose. Hence the world-wide craving for the rare and powerful invisibility cloaks, which lasted much longer and were much more versatile. 

"Simple," said Snape loftily. He chose to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. "I've tried it before." _Not that it worked_, thought Snape.

"Oh, I'm sure," said Lucius, who obviously believed not a word of it. "But _this_ one had better work."

"And how will it help us if it does?" queried Rookwood. "You don't propose to keep him invisible until Voldemort sends you to get his supplies?"

"In a way, yes," said Lucius, "but I don't intend that he should ingest any potion until just before Borgin arrives. At that time, I will approach Mr. Borgin and tell him that our Master has instructed me to collect the throne. With Karkaroff invisible in the seat, it will be difficult to lift, but at least it should allay any suspicions that you two were responsible for the disappearance of Mr. Burke," he said, addressing Rookwood and Karkaroff. 

"We'll need to get rid of the body," said Rookwood with a look towards the corpse. 

"Of course," said Lucius smoothly. "I happen to have a penchant for transfiguration." He pointed his wand, said "_Corpusarata_," and the human form melted into the figure of a dead rat.

"Now, Severus," Lucius siad, turning to face him with a grin that he didn't like. "I believe you have your first task as a Death Eater to complete." 

***

Eh? What did you think? Did everybody act like themselves ok? Tell me in a review!

Next chapter: Snape's attempt at the hour-made concealment potion. And more...!


	9. The Concealment Potion

Author's Note: I forgot, last time to thank my reviewers! First and foremost, I want to thank Lady Game for the suggestions _and the praise. I like that combo! ") And I would like to thank J-Chan, for her words of encouragement! And I thank Iabrisa, Sio's Death, Agreos, and Marauder3Moony (whose name I happen to find very catchy). Ok, now, read! Read and then review, if you please!_

***

            Everything Severus needed was at hand in the shop: unicorn horn, dryad fingers, whipspike ear, and pixie wings, among other things. In the Dark Lord's storage room alone he found at least half a dozen choices for a cauldron—Rookwood said that one of them was probably meant for Snape anyway—and he chose a sturdy iron one with a rune for "success" molded into the metal along the thick rim. He examined it first to make certain that its design would in no way affect his potion-making. 

            "I assume you've all decided you're above helping me prepare?" he asked the other Death Eaters scathingly.

            "Hmm. Yes, quite," said Lucius absentmindedly, still entirely focused upon the book he'd found to read: "History of the Great Wizarding Families of Britain."

            "Never been good with potions," Rookwood replied with a shrug.

            "Can't," said Karkaroff cheerfully.

            "Bugger all of you," Snape grumbled. He was starting to feel like the "little red hen," and he'd always hated that blasted bird.

            To be fair, he probably wouldn't have wanted their help anyway. He knew what he was doing, and he liked to have everything just so. If he let anyone assist, he admitted to himself, he would only end up doing their bit over again, just to make certain they'd done it correctly. That did not, of course, excuse their refusal to even _offer_ to make themselves useful.

            Severus was quite sure of himself in the initial preparation of the ingredients, but once he had ground the horn and cut the fairy wings and gotten everything organized, he realized his pressing need for a written list of steps. He knew he could find it in "Pertinent Present-Day Potion Problems," but he had left it at home with the automatic assumption that he would not need it. He guessed that Borgin and Burke's, having so much stock both useful and useless, might have the book sitting about somewhere.

            "_Accio_ _Libro_," he said quietly with a flick of his wand, inserting a spell word in place of the full title of the book.

            A second later, there was a very loud "thump" on the other side of the door, startling everyone in the room, including Severus.

            "What the devil was that?" asked Rookwood with some alarm. "Borgin can't have returned so early!"

            "Not that it's an impossibility, but I believe that's just my book," said Severus impatiently, moving to open the door.

            "Then get it now, and stop making a nuisance of yourself!" snapped Malfoy irritably. 

            Glaring over his shoulder, Snape yanked on the door handle and caught the heavy tome in his hands as it glided towards him obediently. 

            "I think that spellbook weighs almost as much as you do, Severus," Karkaroff commented in a tone both jocular and insulting.

            "Shut it, or I'll just leave you to the Dark Lord," said Severus with a look of loathing. Karkaroff seemed unaffected.

            "Would you please be quiet!" directed Malfoy blazingly before returning his chill eyes to his book. Severus glared at Lucius hatefully as he moved to collect his chosen cauldron, relenting only at the sound of Karkaroff's appreciative laugh, whereupon Snape finally averted his eyes and concentrated on his work. 

            There weren't any magical Bunsen burners to be had, so Severus decided to use the next best thing: the great fireplace in the shop's main area. 

            He had to admit, as he gathered his belongings and departed the back room, that he was glad to be away from the others for a bit. It gave him a chance to think.

            The potion would be difficult to make, he knew very well, but he reassured himself that he would get it this time. In his little home, one of his favourite pastimes was working with difficult recipes, and he had managed a fair number of them. Once he had even submitted a sample to the ministry's potions research branch, but as he'd never heard back from them, he suspected they had ignored his owl and brushed the sample into the dust bin. 

            The half-burnt logs ignited beautifully when he used the "_incendio_" spell upon them, and he immediately set up the iron pot-hanger over the new flames. He filled the cauldron one quarter full with water, but hesitated before positioning it in the fire and beginning the potion. Turning to the correct page in the book, he read that the addition of the first ingredient must take place exactly six seconds after the first bubble broke the surface of the cauldron water. The following passages called for sometimes more time and sometimes less time between steps, but all of them required exactitude and careful concentration for the potion to be a success.

            Severus read through the instructions once more, and then laid the ingredients out according to the order in which he would need them. He smiled at his work in satisfaction. Now he lifted the cauldron onto the hook and watched with bated breath for the first bubble to show. He could be patient when he needed to be.

            There! A very tiny bubble, to be sure, but he knew what to do. The tension made him cold as he reached for the pickled tongue of dog and counted of the seconds in his head.

            Splash! The dog's tongue was in the pot, and he had thirty seconds until the next ingredient was due to makes its entrance into the potion. One... two... three... He gripped the dried deer liver firmly in preparation. His timing was perfect;  twenty-eight... twenty-nine...

            NO! The liver had stuck to his sweaty palm for such a tiny stretch of time, but it had thrown off the addition by almost a full two seconds.

            "Damn!" burst Severus, enraged. He pointed his wand at the cauldron with a flourish, and it clattered angrily against the pot-hook from which it hung as it turned upside dumped its useless contents into the fire, splashing over the grate and onto the brick hearth. He must start again.

            _From the beginning_, he thought, annoyed. "A maker of potions must be calm and patient, or he will always fail:" he tried to concentrate on that phrase, but could not help but smirk. That was what his first year potions teacher had told him, and look at what he, Severus "slow-down-or-you'll-ruin-the-brew" Snape, was capable of. But he must focus, this time! He _must_ be patient. He must be calm. He drew a quick breath and set up his ingredients again...

            It had been four hours—he had a talent for measuring time in his head—and Severus had not yet gotten past the twenty-second ingredient before making a mistake. His skin felt clammy to his touch, but against his stringy muscles it felt hotter than the fire crackling beneath his cauldron. The hearth was splattered with unusable attempts, and little, filmy bits of pixie wings drifted about the room like phantom snow, casualties of a fit of anger in which Severus had lacerated a few pairs of wings with a well-aimed spell. At the moment, he was tugging at his stringy black hair and convincing himself that it would be best not to blast the entire room to bits.

            He whirled around, placing his back towards the fire, at the sound of the door to the back room opening. Lucius swept into the room, followed by Rookwood. Their relatively relaxed air made Severus' eyes narrow.

            "How's it coming then?" asked Rookwood when he was halfway across the room.

            "Obviously he hasn't yet been able to produce the potion, or he would have been straight in to inform us," said Lucius with a horrible smirk. "How many tries would you say it's been, so far?" 

            "I have no idea," snapped Severus, although he was quite certain that it had been fifteen failed attempts. "Why are you so smug? If I fail, you'll be in as much of a spot as I will!"

            Lucius laughed and said, "Oh, I don't know. Something about watching overconfidence take a fall."

            "I am no more arrogant than you, Malfoy!" said Snape indignantly. Rookwood chuckled, ignoring the fleeting look of disdain which Lucius shot his way.

            "But I've good reason," replied Lucius smoothly, again displaying that hateful smirk. Snape looked at him for a moment, his mind tumbling in confusion and anger. Why didn't he seem concerned that the best potion-maker of the four wizards present was unable to produce the one potion that could save them? Severus' eyes narrowed.

            "You've been putting me on," he said shortly. "I'll bet that Mr. Burke isn't even really dead!" exclaimed Snape, his voice rising.

            "Oh, of course he is," responded Lucius, who sounded a bit exasperated. "Our situation is perfectly real, I assure you!"

            "Then you've got another way to get out of it," Severus accused.

            "Not exactly." But Lucius' tight-lipped smile had become unbearably self-satisfied. "Actually, I already have a flask of concealment potion with me; the sort that takes so long to make. Avery stole it from the Auror headquarters at the Ministry. That's why I thought of the idea in the first place."

            "How dare you," growled Snape. "I have wasted ingredients,  patience, and time on this project, for nothing!"

            "Not 'nothing,' " responded Lucius coolly. "I'm sure that you would not have found a better use for your time. And just think how terribly useful it would be if you were to succeed in creating a batch of potion. Not that I expected you to be able to," he continued lightly. "Incidentally, how far did you get with the steps?'

            "Twenty-second," spat Severus, hoping this accomplishment could restore his wounded pride. 

            "Twenty-second," repeated Malfoy thoughtfully.

            "That's rather good, really," put in Rookwood, disregarding Lucius' glare completely.

            "I am impressed in spite of myself," said Malfoy finally, allowing a shade of a grin to pass over his countenance. 

            "And you should be," Severus declared venomously. "If you'd said any different I would have known you were lying through your teeth!"

            "Hmm. I doubt it," Malfoy looked at Severus down his nose and without another word strutted straight back into the back room.

            "Sorry about that nasty little surprise; didn't know he had it, myself," said Rookwood, who seemed to be needing to give out a great many apologies today. Severus scowled. 

            "A complete and utter waste," he muttered murderously in response and began to scour the hearth with a wave of his wand.

            "Possibly," Rookwood agreed, shrugging and twirling his wand to catch the wafting pixie wings with a net of air and blow them into the fire. "But you have won respect through your efforts. From myself, of course, and even from Lucius, as far as it's possible to get him to appreciate something that isn't a Malfoy wizard or at least blond-haired and female," he laughed. Severus refused to break into a smile, but he sniffed in  a very odd way that might almost have been interpreted as a chuckle. 

            "I am fully capable of making a concealment potion," responded Severus after a moment. "It would have been only a matter of time before I completed it."

            "Yeah, could be," said Rookwood, smiling good-naturedly. "Planning to go about it the longer way?" he asked, still grinning.

            "No," Severus said bluntly, allowing his scowl to remain in place as he began scooping unused ingredients into piles. Rookwood barked a short little laugh.

            "Right then. I suppose you'll join us shortly," he said, his grin intact as he retreated through the back room door. 

            Left alone in his comfortable and familiar silence, Severus stood still with indecision for only a moment before scooping the remaining ingredients into his deep robe pockets.

***

A little bit shorter than usual, but it seemed like a good place to stop. Please leave a comment or suggestion or even just an impression on the review page. Thank you for reading so far!

Author's Response: About the hour-made potion: I'm sorry, I did not mean to imply that there was only an hour's time available in which to make the potion; I meant that, properly brewed, the potion takes exactly one hour to make. Including the many restarts it often takes to get everything perfect, it can take "forever." So, I hope that clears it up. Remember, the potion must be very precise, and must therefore be created within that complete hour. The advantage is that it doesn't take long to make (if you do it right the first time), but the disadvantage is the need for exactitude. 

Also Author's Response: Lucius just had the potion with him, and, as he said, his plan to use it gave him the idea for asking Snape to make the hour-made variety himself. After all, a concealment potion could be useful in a great many different situations, don't you think? 

And yes, Lucius is "quite a prat," heh heh. ")

And, I'm sorry for the short chapters. How about if next chapter, I extend its length? Just for you reviewers, how bout twice as long as usual? Mind you, that will take twice as long to write, but it should be more satisfying for everybody!

And lastly, how far do I plan to take this? At _least_ until Voldemort's downfall. Although that could take a while, at the rate I'm going. 

Ok, thanks for the reviews! I'm three Microsoft Word pages into the next chapter, but I've a ways to go. I'll probably post sometime in the coming week. See ya!


	10. So Hungry

Author's Note: Thank you mucho, mucho to Lady Game for her reviews both helpful and encouraging. And thank you to "Trin," for likewise encouraging me to continue. For a complete address of your questions and concerns, please see the end of the previous chapter, where I have attempted to clear things up. The only thing I didn't include was the punch in the nose Lady Game wanted Snape to give Lucius. But who's not to say he doesn't get his due, eventually? ") I'm not even sure, right now; but I think it's safe to say Lucius has not done himself a favour by acting like a jerk/prat.

I'm learning lots of new Englishy things from fanfiction! Like "prat," for example. There's a good one; thank you Lady Game! I also like "git," although that was in Harry Potter the actual series. And I'm glad to say that I finally found out what it means to "take the micky" or the "mick." To my American ears, it sounded sort of obscene, heh heh. Not that I really thought anything I'd seen in Harry Potter would be that bad, but it was the Weasley twins who were saying it! Anyway. This being the longest chapter to date, I think this seems a good time to apologize for anything un-British, for although I've  been using UK spell check, I'm afraid I'm to lazy to look for a beta reader, and I don't really know what I'm doing. ") That said, and JK Rowling and Terry Pratchett being already having been thanked profusely and credited where credit is due (um, that's _everywhere_ in the case of Ms. Rowling), here is my big and mighty chapter 10! Double digits, woo-hoo! 

All four Death Eaters ended up staying in the back room for the remainder of the night. Severus grumbled a bit, every now and again, as he attempted to amuse himself with various Dark magic relics, and Lucius snapped back at him for the momentary distractions from his reading. 

            "It is truly lamentable that I must spend my valuable time in this horrible little shop, but it is far worse when the company cannot keep their thoughts to themselves!" said Lucius, who had become very annoyed by Severus' last complaint. He kept his voice low, since Rookwood had fallen asleep on the Charm Cloak he'd been fooling with earlier, and Karkaroff had dozed off in the Ravenous Chair.

            "Why don't you leave, then? In fact, what reason is there to stay here at all? Borgin won't even be back till tomorrow evening," Snape said contemptuously. 

            "I didn't think there was anyone here so idiotic as to desire anything else. But you've proven me wrong, Severus. Yes, let's all walk away, leaving any one of us free to go to the Dark Lord without fear of his comrades," said Lucius caustically. "I don't know what's going on under that slimy mop of hair you've got there, but I can rest assured that it doesn't involve thinking!"

            Severus glared at him, his black eyes gleaming dangerously, and moved his lips as though to speak. Finally he managed, in a strangled whisper, "The habit must be contagious."

            "Then don't come too near," Lucius said evenly. "I'm quite fond of my sensibilities, thank you."

            Snape's eyes bored into the top of Malfoy's spider-silk hair, and he wondered what it would be like to see the blond strands burst into flame. He smirked at the comforting vision, but Lucius was again absorbed in his book, and took no notice. That fact quickly drained the purpose from his glare, and Severus morosely settled back against the uncomfortable shelves.

            Messing about with the contents of the room now seemed too much a bore to bother with, but watching Malfoy engrossed in his reading reminded Severus of the blue book he'd purchased at Flourish and Blott's. Since he did not feel inclined to sleep, he reached into his pocket and drew out "The Art of Lying and Catching Others At It." He thumbed through the rambling introduction and stopped at chapter one: "Miss Finny Speaks from Experience."

            On the first page, Miss Finny briefly reassured him of the usefulness of her Art just prior to launching into a series of stories describing how it had served her on various occasions. He found the anecdotes interesting, but after a time the near silence of the room began to weigh upon his eyelids, and it became a chore to keep the book in focus. 

            He willed himself to stay awake _just_ long enough to see Malfoy drift off to sleep, in spite of the message of weariness relayed by his tired eyes. He fought the battle but in the end his body could not help but yield to the natural urge to sleep after a day of trying experiences.

             He opened his eyes dazedly, some time later, to see that not much had changed since his last clear memory. He sat up, from where he had been curled at the foot of one of the bookcases, and rubbed the mark on his cheek where it had lain against a corner of the blue book. Karkaroff was slumped in the throne, seemingly lifeless but for the faint whistle of his breath, and across the room from Snape, Rookwood had pushed the Charm Cloak away to rest his head on his arm, instead. To Severus' annoyance, Lucius was still in the same position, leaning up against a cleared space along the wall with excellent posture while his eyes drank in the book. He looked as though he had nearly finished it.

            "Sleep well, Severus?" asked Lucius mildly, looking up briefly.

            "Well enough," Snape admitted. "Did you read _all_ night?"

            "The subject matter fascinates me," said Lucius by way of a reply. Severus felt a slight pang as though lost a challenge in falling asleep while Malfoy sat awake. 

            "It's round about eight o'clock, I imagine" said Severus thoughtfully. 

            "Eight fifteen," corrected Malfoy, holding up a silver pocket watch. Severus rolled his eyes and was thankful when Lucius did not seem to have noticed.

            "That late, eh?" came Rookwood's drowsy voice, muffled slightly by his arm. "I'm usually awake by seven. Supposed to be at the Ministry by nine thirty," he yawned, sitting upright. 

            "Don't even consider it," said Lucius.

"Then I'd better inform my colleagues that I won't be able to make it in today. 'Sthere any floo powder on the mantle, Severus?"

            "Possibly," Snape shrugged. "I honestly didn't think to look."

            "Why don't you accompany Mr. Rookwood and find out," said Lucius incisively, closing his book on one finger to keep his place. 

            "What's this, Lucius? Don't you trust me?" Rookwood grinned as he stood up and brushed off his deep scarlet robes.

            "Why bother with trust when it is so much more dependable to simply verify everything?" Lucius asked bluntly.

            "Why indeed." Rookwood, grinned at Malfoy with a slightly less amiable air. "Severus, you're coming, I suppose?"

            "It seems that way." Snape narrowed his eyes at Lucius, who smiled coolly in return and watched the new recruit closely as he followed Rookwood from the room and shut the door loudly behind. 

            "Subtlety is unknown to the Malfoys," said Rookwood immediately after the sound-proof barrier was closed. Severus looked at him sideways as he fell into step beside him. 

            "I've only ever met the one, but I'm inclined to agree," said Severus. 

            "Yeah, sharing a common room, you must've learnt that right off," Rookwood smiled sardonically. "A pain in the arse, was he?" 

            Snape shrugged. "I never knew him very well," he said truthfully. "Malfoy was two forms above me, and he frequented different social circles, shall we say." He sneered. _He frequented social circles, period_, said the nasty little voice that passed for a conscience, although ordinarily its main goal was simply to annoy its host.

            "Oh, is that so?" said Rookwood, skirting a pile of temporarily petrified toads. "I would've said you were just the sort."

            A little flame of annoyance sparked in Severus' mind. "What, pure-blood and Slytherin? Even Malfoy had the sense to set stricter standards."

            Rookwood chuckled. They had reached the fireplace, and his eyes now scanned the mantle for the floo powder. With a satisfied look, he reached for a brown biscuit tin and brought it down. Severus saw that, sure enough, it was nearly filled with the slightly green, shimmering powder.

            "I didn't mean that, exactly," Rookwood said as he took a handful of Floo Powder. "It was only that in school it was always a joke—at least among the Ravenclaw—that Lucius Malfoy was the only person who could wring the best out of the Slytherin. He had his confidantes you see—they were the highborns—and then there were the... _specialized_ lackeys," he explained. 

            "Crabbe and Goyle..." said Severus, nodding.

            "Among others, of course. There was Morbis Baddock, who could bewitch just about anything... Angus Pritchard—he was downright clever, the little git... and Bellatrix Black could write a book on nasty curses. Malfoy always looked out for the useful ones," he finished. An opening in his grip was allowing Floo powder to intermittently trickle onto the floor as he continued to converse. 

            "Well, then, you know more about it than I do," sniffed Severus.

            "So I understand. I only thought, seeing as he asked you to join us, that you'd have been one of _them_, for sure. But come to think of it, if you had been, I imagine I would have seen you prancing about the school with old Malfoy, and I don't recall noticing you in that capacity. In fact, weren't you the tall one who went around with those Gryffindor boys?" said Rookwood suddenly, looking delighted to have remembered.

            "Certainly not!" said Severus angrily.

            "Oh, it's not as though it's a crime, Severus! I had a few mates in Gryffindor, myself." Rookwood looked questioningly at the other man's scowling face. "What are you on about?"

            "If you are referring to Potter's little gang," Snape began icily, "Then I assure you that 'friendship' had nothing to do with it. The bastard had it out for me from the day I arrived." He swallowed at the burn of the frustration and anger of seven rotten years. "Not that I didn't give him enough grief to settle the score." _Wishful thinking_, he thought. _I never repaid him properly for what they tried to do_.

            "Oh?" said Rookwood, more as though he were trying to placate Severus than to express his interest. "Sounds rather nasty." He tried out a smile, to which Snape did not respond. 

"Well, I've got to let the ministry know—right. Don't take your eyes off me, now! I might bolt..." and he grinned again with the obvious intent of persuading Severus to quit looking so glum, but let his face fall when the dour young man merely stared at him and said "Do hurry. I shall be very bored, waiting."

"All right," said Rookwood, a bit hurt, and placed the biscuit tin back up on the mantle. He knelt down on the hearth and onto the cold logs threw his handful of Floo powder. "Department of Mysteries, office of the Director," he said very clearly into the ensuing green flames, and quickly thrust his head into the magical fire. 

            "Hello, Protus," Severus heard Rookwood's oddly flat voice saying from inside the flames. "I'm afraid I won't be able to come in today... No, I'm well, I just have a bit of a crisis on my hands. ...By tomorrow, I promise, yes... Yes, thank you for understanding. I'll see you then." And he pulled his head out of the green fire, which quickly died away, leaving the logs unburnt.

            "That was very quick, wasn't it?" said Rookwood, standing up. Severus shrugged. "You really aren't very encouraging, Severus." Snape didn't even look at him. 

            With a sigh, Rookwood resolutely started towards the back room once more, and Severus moved to walk beside him. 

            "How did you join the Death Eaters?" asked Severus thoughtfully, still looking disagreeable. "Was it through Malfoy?"

            "Hah! If Malfoy had asked me to come, I think I would certainly have refused, if only to spite him," Rookwood replied, his previously serene face scrunched up with dislike. 

            "Then who?" said Severus impatiently. 

            "Contacted by the Dark Lord himself, I was. He was looking out for ministry workers who were deep inside and who shared his sympathies. I've always been best with theoretical magic, so the Ministry took me straight out of school, at the recommendation of my head of house. I happened to be in a rather advantageous situation, a great asset to our present cause. Dunno exactly how our Master found me."

            "I suppose he has his ways," Severus commented. "So do you—well... go out for the muggle torture and all of that?"

            "Worried about that bit of the deal, are you?" asked Rookwod with a slightly taunting grin. 

            "No!" Severus said angrily. "I've already _killed_ a man, you know—" Rookwood rolled his eyes—"and I was just thinking that I couldn't imagine an _intellectual_ getting his little hands dirty working for the Dark Lord!"

            "Don't be thick," said Rookwood dismissively. "Muggle killing isn't the reason I joined, and I can't say it's on my list of 'fun things to do,' but a little unnatural selection can't really hurt the wizard gene pool, now can it?" he asked rhetorically. "Research shows that muggles are practically a whole evolutionary step down from wizards. They say they don't even have the same sort of thoughts that we do. Did you know their minds cannot handle abstract concepts, things like magic, which can't be touched? It's ingrained within their culture and their history. So just don't worry about it," he said reassuringly. "Just remember that they're not like us."

            "And the mudbloods?" he quizzed. It seemed sort of strange to hear someone like Rookwood speaking in a manner he thought of as purely Slytherin. He didn't know what to make of it.

            Rookwood wrinkled his nose. "It sort of makes me sick to think of that sort of interbreeding. I really can't stomach the idea."

            "I see," said Severus, his curiosity satisfied. He did not know what else he could say. 

            "I know at first it seems sort of cruel," said Rookwood somewhat sympathetically, "but think of it as culling the bad pups from a litter. It's distasteful work at the outset, unless you're of the mindset of dear Mr. Malfoy and his crowd. But it's all for the better, in the end. It won't bother you after a while. And I daresay, you might even come to enjoy it a bit, as many of us do. Myself included" He smiled and winked conspiratorialy, but Severus was not paying him much attention.

            They were at the door again, and Rookwood sighed as he put his hand on the door handle. "Here we go," he said, and pushed it open.

            "Be quiet, Karkaroff," Lucius said sharply as Rookwood, followed by Snape, eased open the door and stepped inside the storage room. "You had better stay silent, or I promise you, we shall have no qualms about leaving you to explain the situation to Mr. Borgin!"

            "What's this?" asked Rookwood.

            "I'm hungry, and all I did was ask him to make me something to eat," shrugged Karkaroff from his chair.

            "You idiot! You know perfectly well what you tried to do," snarled Lucius, his fists clenched. Severus was prepared to accept that Lucius was merely overreacting to Karkaroff's demands until he noticed the smug look on Karkaroff's thin face.

            "Well, what did he do?" prompted Severus as he attempted to read Karkaroff's irritating grin.

            "Tried to use the throne, of course," said Rookwood. "Since we know he has nothing to back his power, he's not difficult to ignore, but it's quite annoying..."

            "What, he's started giving orders?" 

            "Indeed," hissed Lucius. He unclenched his hands and rubbed his temples vigorously. "His lordship—Karkaroff!" he corrected himself with a snarl, "demanded that I cook him up a 'nice, big breakfast' so he could 'start his day right,' " he told them venomously.

            Snape laughed, but Rookwood shook his head. "Karkaroff, you are behaving atrociously. If you do not revoke that order, I shall be very hard pressed to think of a reason to let you live past tonight."

            Karkaroff giggled briefly before looking Rookwood dead on and exclaiming "make me!"

            Rookwood darted forward at once, his hand a blur as it reached for his wand. Red sparks shot from the tip as it whisked though the air and pointed at Karkaroff's forehead.

            Lucius was grinning nastily, though one hand still clutched his head. "Ah, Karkaroff. A very bad idea, issuing commands so carelessly. That one was a bit too tempting."

            Rookwood didn't seem to be listening. His eyes were focused menacingly at Karkaroff, though his face was relaxed and wearing a faint, distracted smile. But from the look in Karkaroff's eyes, Rookwood's initial display had been fearsome enough.

            "Come now, Karkaroff!" said Rookwood, "I haven't had the chance to use the Great Curses lately, but I don't think you'd like me to start practising on you."

            "Oh, fine!" Karkaroff choked, turning to look at Malfoy. "Don't trouble yourself with my breakfast. Apparently I'm _not_ hungry," he sulked. Rookwood beamed as he lowered his wand.

            "Thank you. Feeling better, Lucius?"

            "Just perfect!" snapped Malfoy, smoothing his hair. "If that idiot opens his mouth again, I swear I'll hex him silent. And I won't use '_Silencio_!' "

            "I'm certain we'd like to all about it," broke in Severus with a malevolent glance at Karkaroff.

            "Severus..." Rookwood warned. 

            "Oh, Rookwood," responded Severus in oily tones. "What else is there to do while we wait? And because of him I've completely missed my chance to... learn." He had pulled out his wand, and was beginning to inspect it in a manner certain to make Karkaroff nervous. Severus knew he had struck the right chord when he watched the captive man shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He felt the corners of his mouth turn into a villainous leer. "You said yourself you're out of practise." 

            "I also believe I said I specialize in theory? The casting of curses is not my strongest suit," said Rookwood. "Besides, I personally feel that we must leave him be at _least_ until we're safely away from this shop.

            "Then you are of course excepted from our bid for a little amusement. And I believe Severus does have a point." Lucius smirked and in one movement drew his wand and swished it through the air. "_Aestus__ Aestivus_!"

            "What did you do??" demanded Karkaroff nervously. Severus noticed that he was actually starting to sweat with the prospect. And even through that darkish complexion, it was obvious that his face was turning red. With a laugh, Severus realized that Karkaroff was not suffering from anxiety, but from the effects of Malfoy's curse.

            "Clever, Malfoy. Er, Lucius! _Aestus__ Aestivus... increases the perceived temperature of the victim's body," explained Severus for the benefit of the squirming Karkaroff._

            "Very good, Severus," said Malfoy lazily. "One of my favourites since boyhood."

"Say the countercurse! Please..." pleaded Karkaroff, fidgeting to what extent he was able. Already his near-black hair was becoming lank with sweat, and his goatee looked positively disgusting with the condensed perspiration. "It was just that I was _hungry_," he moaned.

"No, that was simply the last straw," Lucius retorted. "You are the reason I had to spend the night on a hard floor when I could have been asleep in bed!"

"And it's your fault I never got the chance to practise," added Severus.

"Malfoy, I beg you to let Karkaroff alone," said Rookwood. "When we're safe and sound, _then_ you two can duel it out. Until then, do us all a favour by letting up that curse before Igor blows and we're left to clean up the mess. Yes?"

"Oh, it's not as though it makes a difference," said Lucius, and with a dramatic sigh, he flicked his wand. Karkaroff gasped with relief.

"I won't do anything else, I swear!" he breathed as he tilted up his hand to come as close as possible to raising it in oath. while Karkaroff's word was probably useless ordinarily, Severus mused, this was one fellow who could be counted upon to do whatever must surely guaranteed his own safety. Severus was satisfied that in this situation, that meant refraining from "doing anything else."

"It seems you were right, Augustus," said Lucius loftily. "You should be proud. In truth, he _is_ much more endurable when he is not squirming and squealing." But from the look in Lucius' eyes, it seemed likely that as soon as their ordeal was over, Malfoy's wand would be giving its own opinion on the worth of watching Karkaroff suffer. 

Rookwood rolled his eyes. "Well, I'm sure I'm grateful. As it seems we have an entire day ahead of us, would you care to join me in a game of Muggle Chess?"

"You have a board?" queried Severus, raising his eyebrows.

"No, but I saw one in the shopfront. I believe the sign said it was cursed, but I think we can handle a little excitement."

"Excitement? In Muggle chess?" Lucius scoffed. "You know, don't you, that the pieces can't even move."

"Thank you for the lesson, Lucius. I suppose you won't be playing winner?" asked Rookwood wryly. He was answered by a scowl from Lucius, but Karkaroff looked up with a grain of hope in his sulky expression.

"Queue me up for the next game?" he asked. 

"Don't expect anyone to move the pieces for you," Snape sniped.

"Why of course, Igor," said Rookwood, as though Severus had never spoken. 

The rest of the morning was uneventful. Severus beat Rookwood and Karkaroff in the first two games, but was being trounced by a Rookwood—Karkaroff alliance at the approach of noon. Lucius had finished his book by midmorning and finally drifted into an ungraceful sleep in his slouched position against the bookcase. He looked a bit like an unused marionette, thought Severus, who was now feeling secretly pleased that he was not the one passing out from exhaustion in front of the other three Death Eaters. 

"Hah ha!" exclaimed Rookwood as he moved the white bishop to trap Severus' sparsely guarded king. "Checkmate! What do you think of that, Severus?" he grinned at Karkaroff, whose legs and hands were swinging in a synchronised movement that was possibly supposed to be some sort of victory dance. 

"I'd have to remind you that it took two of you to bring be down," Severus gloated, glad of something to distract him from his shameful defeat.

"Don't get sore, now!," said Karkaroff smugly. "I say loser gets us something to eat. I'm about to die of starvation!" Severus was already fighting off the hunger pangs in his stomach—he hadn't eaten in more than twenty-four hours—and Karkaroff's reminder made his gut twist in agreement.

"It's too bad, in a way, that we got caught in a Dark Magic shop rather than a supermarket," sighed Rookwood, who from his pained look was just as aware of his hunger as the other two.

"We've really got to eat," said Karkaroff sensibly, "or it's just begging for trouble when Borgin returns, you know!"

"Well, Rookwood?" said Severus meaningfully. Rookwood looked thoughtful. 

"Our Mr. Malfoy is occupied..." he said slowly.

"Good! I'll curse him not to wake till we come back, and you and I shall make a visit to the Leaky Cauldron, Augustus" said Severus, rising quickly and speaking determinedly. 

"Yes, go on," prompted Karkaroff. "Then nobody will be alone. And you'll be back shortly anyway."

Rookwood considered for a very short time before standing up and saying, "All right. Go on, Severus!"

With a satisfied smile, Severus moved quietly across the room to Lucius and flicked his wand delicately over his head as he mumbled "_Remone__ Soporus_." Malfoy appeared no different, but Severus was satisfied that his magic had worked. He could _feel_ it. That was what made a wizard great, he reflected as Rookwood grinned and beckoned him out and into the main area of the shop. Not an incredible memory, per se; but an ability to feel the right and the wrong paths in the magic. Intuition, it was: a sense refined through practise as much as anything else; the very thing that separated wizards from muggles.

"Hurry, Severus," Rookwood was almost pleading as they marched through the main room of the shop. He reached the door in strides rather longer than Severus would have thought possible for a man of his unimpressive stature, and had stepped out onto the street before Snape had even reached the door. 

"I didn't realize how much I needed food until I started walking," commented Rookwood as Severus stepped out into the wan sunlight peeping from behind a streaky cloud cover. "It feels as though I'm just floating along..."

Severus nodded curtly and smiled slightly. He knew the feeling; now that his attention was drawn to it, he could feel his hands trembling with lack of nourishment, and his abdomen felt as though it has shrunk away into nothing.

Diagon Alley was nearly as crowded with shoppers as ever, despite the fact that it was the middle of a Wednesday. As the one place in Britain where a wizard could buy nearly anything he needed, customers from all around the country, and many families were prepared to make a special day of it. And today was quite a nice day, considering the way the weather often conspired to turn a nice outing into a spirit-soaking shower.

Rookwood chatted a bit as they strolled at a quick pace, their metabolisms lending them the energy to make it to the food. Severus, however, made no real contributions. His mind was on eating first, keeping Voldemort from punishing second, and somewhere at the end of a list of subjects important to him was Rookwood's banter about why he thought Quigget's Menagerie was going out of business, or whether or not the man inspecting Eeylop's owls looked something like a rooster. He soon became satisfied that Rookwood needed no more encouragement to continue his chipper chatter than the occasional nod of his head and smile or, when he managed it, a well-placed question such as "Why is that?" or "Is that so?" 

"Ah, the Leaky Cauldron," said Rookwood with relief as they approached the outline of the archway. "My stomach informs me it was afraid we'd never make it this far!"

"Well, just hang on another moment," said Severus touching the single brick at the top of the arch, causing the wall to rearrange itself into a doorway through which they passed, into the close, aromatic atmosphere of the Leaky Cauldron. Getting into the it from this side was relatively easy, since usually only wizardkind ever entered the Alley, and anyone else was more welcome to leave than to enter Diagon Alley uninvited.

Rookwood made a dash for the bar while Severus followed at a more dignified pace.

"Excuse me? Sir? Sir?" said Rookwood in a desperate plea for the barkeep's attention. The thin, middle-aged man looked his way at the third "sir." 

"What will you have?" he asked dispassionately. 

"Do you have take-away?" 

"Hang on." The man turned to a rectangular doorway through which steaming cauldrons and warm plates could be seen laid out on the long, dark-wooden tables. "Agatha, can you do take-away?" he called.

"If they'll pay for the boxes," said a female voice. It's owner poked her grey-haired head through the doorway. "I can transfigure you a few boxes if you'll pay the cost of my table linens. They're about the right size," she said addressing Rookwood.

"That will be just fine," said Rookwood, smiling distractedly with the thought of food. As soon as the barkeep found his enchanted order pad, his customer began to rattle off orders for a great quantity of food. In half-embarrassment, half-anticipation, Severus turned away to scan the room with his dark eyes.

Predictably, he recognised none of the patrons, though quite a few of them looked vaguely familiar. And positively none of them were doing anything more interesting than eating, drinking or talking. How dull.

"Good news, Severus!" said Rookwood, clapping a hand to his shoulder so that he gave a small start. "They've already cooked everything we ordered except the faery brain mash. She's going to bring us the Butterbeer and the pot pie while we pass the time. Makes waiting a welcome treat, eh?"

"Oh, good," said Severus, eyeing the food and drinks which the barkeep was now levitating to a nearby table. Hungrily, both men followed their meal and sat down, and were digging into the pie almost before they had touched the chairs.

Both men were silent for a few moments as they devoured the pastry covering and its warm innards, but it was not long before they had to slow down, if only to avoid choking.

"Just what I needed," said Rookwood contentedly, swallow a large bite. Severus chanced a grin as he gulped down a swig of butterbeer. He had to admit, he was already becoming full with this small part of the meal, and he wondered that Rookwood would be able to help the others consume all that he was going to bring back with them. Severus Snape was a thin man for a reason.

"Don't tell me you've finished!" Rookwood said in mock horror, his eyes wide as Severus' fork fussed with a gravy-covered piece of meat as though it was a particularly difficult potions puzzle. He was on his third helping, and that was more than he was accustomed to having in a single meal. 

"I don't know," said Severus, finally spearing the meat and eating it slowly. "I suppose I am." 

"Then it's all mine," Rookwood chuckled, drawing the serving platter towards him to replace his empty plate. "You don't mind, do you?" he asked, and Severus shook his head.

Once again he found himself turning away to look about the room. His hunger now preoccupied with the infusion of pot pie, he could concentrate on observation. It was one of the things he liked to do best: simply watching people at whatever they did. In school, he'd received endless dirty looks from people who found that black gaze disturbing, but that had only slowed him down, never stopped him. One could find out a lot by watching.

Drat. His gaze had lingered too long on the witch with the odd hair-twist down the back of her head, and she had met his eyes long enough that he was certain she'd noticed. He kept his gaze on her for another moment, hoping she would look away, before he finally lowered his eyes back to his table

"Wha', Snape, you don' fancy tha wom'n?" teased Rookwood through a mouthful, his eyes. 

"I was merely looking," said Severus, quelling the indignity of having this suggested to him. 

"Oh, really? It's a good thing, too. Not only is she wearing the robes of a ministry Auror; she's also a mudblood."

"You can't tell that!" Severus said sceptically. 

"Just look at the nose," he whispered with certainty. "You can see by the nose. That's not a pure-blood nose if I know my business, and I do."

"I'll take your word for it." 

Rookwood grinned. "Go on and hex her," he suggested impishly. 

"Oh, I'm certain no-one would notice," Severus said with a role of his eyes.

"It's crowded; they won't. And I feel a need for a little meal-time entertainment, don't you?"

"Not if I'm expected to provide it!" Severus huffed, crossing his arms obstinately. "And anyway, she already saw me looking at her. She'd suspect me straight away."

"But she wouldn't be able to prove it," Rookwood reminded him, and was met with a seething glare. "Oh, very well. I'll do it, if you're so concerned."

"What do you have planned?" asked Severus quietly, not daring to arouse suspicion by chancing another look. 

"Which do you prefer; completely cruel, or irritating and mild?" Rookwood tilted his head as he posed the question. Severus shrugged very slightly, paranoid that the mudblood woman would be 

"All right, then," he said, exasperated, as he drew out his wand and surreptitiously pointed it over Severus' shoulder. "_Lustius_," he whispered.

"What did you do, spell her to look like Lucius Malfoy?" Snape smirked, the spell being one with which he was unfamiliar. 

"Hardly. I went for something rather in _between_ cruel and annoying, rather than just plain annoying. Watch her," Rookwood directed with a devilish grin, already peeping around Severus to observe his curse at work.  

Trying not to look very obvious, Severus turned around in his chair and found his view obstructed by a wall of aqua-coloured fabric. As it was obviously a wizard's robe, he followed it upwards into a rather flushed pink face. He let out a soft "oh, no," as he looked into the eyes of the auror.

"Do you... mind… if I sit here?" she asked breathlessly, indicating Rookwood's chair. Severus turned, and although he might have expected it, saw that his companion of moments before had relocated to the bar and was trying with little success to stifle his laughter.

"I'm afraid I'm already here with a... _friend_," spat Severus with a hateful glare aimed at Rookwood. 

"I don't want to keep you," said the woman, but she sat down across from him anyway and looked at him. But not into his eyes, he noticed, and he self-consciously adjusted his robes. He decided that standing up to address her would probably be a mistake, as she was now biting her lip and picking at her high, practical collar.

"Lust," said Severus aloud, his mind churning up the word that was tickling his tongue. "_Lustius_—I don't mean to be rude, but if you'll see that man over there," he pointed to Rookwood, who raised his eyebrows and was having difficulty fighting down a smirk, "he's put a _Lustius_ curse on you, if you're feeling a bit, er off?"

"Yes," she said quietly, leaning forward slightly across the table. "a bit... different. Like I've never felt..." She looked in his eyes now, and with a quick movement took his hand before he could move it from the table. Naturally, instinctively, he pulled his arm away from her hungry touch, but to his surprise, she came with it. A collision with her hip was enough to knock the serving platter onto the floor with a clink, a clash, and a splat. The woman herself, whom Severus now guessed to be at the very least a decade his senior, threw her weight down upon her knees and laid her blondish head upon _his_ knee.

Most of the other patrons were now glancing furtively at Severus and the auror, while a good many of them were staring openly. 

"Use me but as your spaniel!" said the woman in a pleading voice, and as she tried to stroke his thigh, Severus now stood up reflexively. "Spurn me, strike me, but give me leave, unworthy as I am, to follow you! And anything else that might prove, ah, productive," she said, once again eyeing him without making eye contact. _First, I'll kill her_, thought Severus, trying to calm himself. _And _then_ I'll kill Rookwood_. He tried very hard to ignore the scandalised looks of the wizards and witches at the other tables as he backed away from the brush of her fingers, marching over to the obscenely grinning Rookwood and jabbing him in the ribs with his wand.

"Get the food and we're _leaving_," he hissed. Though most people were still lobbing looks at both him and the dreamy-eyed woman, they were also very keen to talk about what "that git" was doing to "that poor girl." This kept the noise level high, and Severus was vaguely thankful for that.

"Didn't expect the bad Shakespeare," Rookwood beamed irrepressibly. "But that was a rather nice bit of curse work if I say so myself!"

It took a lot of self-control to keep the word "_Crucio_," from slipping between his lips, as evidenced by the eager red sparking of his wand. Instead, he settled for a soft but forceful "_Imperio," and smiled unabashedly when Rookwood's leering expression faded into a look of gentle bemusement. He felt the hands of the woman upon his upper wand arm, making the hairs on his neck stand up unpleasantly. _

"_Get the food and return to me as swiftly as possible_," he instructed, and Rookwood jumped up as would a muggle who's just realised he's left the gas on at his house. 

"Please," the woman begged softly, and though Severus steeled himself for an explanation of "please" what, she merely moved to take hold of his shoulders, and was instantly shaken off with indignity.

Rookwood returned from the kitchen, laden with steaming cartons, just as the woman looked ready to speak again.

"Come Rookwood, we're leaving," Severus called abruptly. He stalked to the brick wall and tapped the bricks in the correct order, being very careful to look at no one. When the archway had opened up, Severus stalked through, with the overloaded Rookwood following him like larger version of a House Elf.

He did not look back when the bricks began reform the wall, and he sped up his pace when he heard that final wailing of "_Wherefore was I to such keen mockery born?" before the final brick clunked into place._

***

Author's note: What did you think? I know the Shakespeare thing was a little weird, but I bought the modern "Midsummer Night's Dream" movie a few weeks ago, and the phrases popped into my head, and it so I just stuck it in. I know I left out the words "neglect me" and "lose me," but I didn't think it necessary to include them. I suppose next chapter I'll maybe give Rookwood something to say about it; I don't know. I just sort of liked it there. Also, for anyone who's getting worried about this being a "Snapey loses his girlfriend in a tragedy that's just waiting to happen" or "Snapey gets a visit from well-meaning love doctor insert name here; Rookwood?" or "let's put Snapey in a sexual situation because that would be cute," fic, please don't panic! I tried (don't know if I succeeded) to convey the fact that the _Lustius_ curse was an utter embarrassment to him, and that it was simply one of the most humiliating things Rookwood could think of (and was able to perform) to both mess with the mudblood and annoy Snape. Did he seem appropriately disgusted? Tell me what you think; if that was just cheesy beyond reckoning, inform me, please! The story shall be changed! ") I'll quit with the Midsummer Night's Dream stuff if it annoyed people! I thought it would be good to establish Snape's reactions to other people. Was this a good way to do it? Questions encouraged, suggestions tolerated... ") No, I'm kidding! Suggestions and questions are both very welcome indeed!!


	11. Incompetence Among Death Eaters

Author's Note: Finally!!! Another chapter! It is extremely difficult to write during the school year, especially when you _know you should be working on original work. I'm a senior in high school now, and I want to enter a writing contest thing, but none of my stories are finished and my creative pores don't know where to begin! Ahhhhhh! I'll bet a lot of fanfiction writers feel the same way, eh? But this way, I'm getting tons of practice writing, which I probably wouldn't be if I were just rambling on about random things that come to mind. _

I must tell you, I have removed the "knurd" from chapter one and simply replaced it with a more Harry-Potterish substance. I was all set to leave it in there, and then I went and did an online search to see if anywhere it would tell me on what page to find the description of knurd if "Men at Arms." And I found out, I'd put the right name to the wrong thing! I didn't realize, but apparently in Pratchett's world, "Knurd" isn't an antidote to drunkenness… It is the STATE that is the complete opposite of drunkenness. And it appears in "Sourcery" and "Guards! Guards" (the first Discworld novel I ever read, sniff of nostalgia) apparently, in addition to "Men at Arms." Or something like that. All I know is, knurd isn't a drink, heh heh. Drinks can make you knurd, I understand; but I don't really think the drink Lucius bought for Snape worked _that_ well. Anyway. I still have to fix the red light/green light thing in the chapter where the dog dies, but I keep forgetting about it. 

I had something else to say, but now I forget what it was! Dang it, maybe it'll come to me later. I just want to add that I will be continuing to work on this story, but the updates are going to take a while. This one is seven word doc. pages, but I think ten pages is not very likely in future chapters, at least till winter break. Now, on with the show!

***

The Imperius curse, Severus soon discovered, was not an easy one to maintain. It was difficult to remember to continue walking, with so much of his will devoted to retaining control over Rookwood. And thinking: practically impossible! Every time a thought tried to occur to him, he forgot what was going on and felt as though he were dropping something he'd been juggling. People were giving him dirty looks as he absentmindedly brushed past them, and he returned their glares even as he tried to excuse himself. Sometimes he managed to say "sorry." Once he accidentally told a woman "keep walking," instead, but even if he hadn't been so preoccupied he wouldn't have taken the time to be embarrassed. He merely quickened his pace, and managed to shuffle along to Knockturn Alley, which was virtually empty at this time of day. 

            "Hurry up!" said Severus exasperatedly when he reached the door to Borgin and Burke's, holding the it open and looking as agitated as he was ever likely to look. Obediently, Rookwood strode inside, and in response to the urging of Severus' mind, went straight for the back room. Behind him scurried Severus, his face damp and burning beneath a layer of cold sweat. As soon as he had shut the door, his lungs released a long sigh of relief and his head began to throb. No wonder Rookwood had been loathe to use the Imperius curse! Its effects on the ill-prepared user, Severus was finding, could be quite unpleasant.

            "How'd we get here?" asked Rookwood in a puzzled voice, looking around the room suspiciously. 

"Food!" Karkaroff exclaimed, stretching his fingers towards the boxes emblazoned with their little cracked cauldrons. From the bookshelf against which he still leaned, Lucius sniffed in his sleep and shifted slightly, but did not wake. "Bring it over here, Augustus," begged Karkaroff, who had showed an unprecedented streak of sense in lowering his voice. Food, in the evolutionary chain, often brings out even the most deeply buried rivers of thought. 

Rookwood seemed to have only just realized that he was loaded, pack-mule style, with the warm containers, and he shot a questioning look at Severus as he dumped them in the centre of the room. 

Severus straightened and pushed a lock of greasy dark hair out of his eyes, grinning smugly despite the pain that ever so slowly was beginning to recede. 

            "Augustus," he smirked. "Thank you so much for carrying all of our purchases. I just couldn't see the sense of burdening both of us with the chore if one of us could avoid it." Nonchalantly he toyed with his new wand in his pale, thin fingers. If Rookwood tried anything, he would learn the effects of more than the Imperius curse today.

            The other Death Eater's mouth moved slightly, and his brow furrowed in a look caught between two unreadable emotions, and Severus stiffened. Karkaroff mumbled something about cold food being nearly as bad as no food. Then Rookwood grinned and laughed out loud, and the tension burst.

            "Thought you'd get me back, eh?" Rookwood said, crossing his arms. "I'd say, it was all worth it, just to see the way you—the way you looked at her!" he tried to continue, but he seemed unable to contain his laughter.

            "What happened?" Karkaroff asked, succumbing to the contagion of Rookwood's mirth with a chuckle of his own. Severus flung him a silencing glare, but he realized the direction of the situation and the fact that his dignity was not easily salvageable. Not that he would not try... He had always _tried_; taking it lying down was even worse—a lesson learned through experience and through generations of pureblood pride coded in his very chromosomes. 

            "Oh, I just decided our little outing would be as good a time as any to start a little practise," Severus declared in a threatening tone which quickly lost its potency, juxtaposed as it was against Rookwood's snort of laughter and Severus' own quick amendment: "You'd better shut it, Rookwood, before I decide to have another go at it!" 

            "You know _Lustius_?" Rookwood turned to Karkaroff and began unheedingly, his face bright with smiling. 

            "You mean him?" said Karkaroff, nodding his head at the dozing Malfoy.

            "No! The curse! Really... Severus thought exactly the same thing." said Rookwood, but he was still grinning. 

            "That's enough!" Severus snapped, moving towards the other man with his wand out.

            "Oh alright! I won't say anything," Rookwood said as he moved away, but he was still grinning terribly. 

            "And if you ever do, I'll find out, and come for you, and I'll curse you till you'd kill your own mother just to make it stop!"

            "Ah, God rest her soul; good thing she's already dead, then!" Rookwood moved his hands as though to make the sign of the Holy Trinity, but was evidently not a terribly religious man, as he left out the tap on the left side of his chest completely. He was smiling in that precise fashion that, like Malfoy's smirk, really seemed to know how to make Severus' blood boil. Augustus was evidently finding fun in mangling Snape's attacks with the most irrelevant comments. Severus was not entirely certain how much of it was guile and how much was simply the side effect of a stupid sense of humour, but he decided the best response would be a glare. He managed a lovely one, and shot it menacingly at Rookwood as he made for the cartons of food.

            "Well Severus, if you would kindly provide Igor with a bit of bread, since I see you're serving. You can soak it in the mermaid scale broth," said Augustus, and of course Severus ignored him completely, instead following his antagoniser's slow movements toward Lucius. The white-haired man was slumped in a limp and undignified lump, and had a face deserted of either the usual malice or unusual kindness. That malice had migrated into Rookwood's face, and it crept into Severus' smirk as he eagerly watched Rookwood draw his wand and point it at Lucius' face. Kindness was absent from every corner; the walls themselves seemed content to exude malevolence. Dark magic was not a "nice" thing, whatever it might be. It could roast your worst enemy or save a nation from a tyrant leader; it could make you immortal or kill you on the spot; but you would never see it walk an old lady across the street, or tenderly care for a baby bird. Unless, perhaps, the bird was really the unholy offspring of Lucifer and would be eating the old lady as soon as she had crossed the street and into the dark alley across the way... 

            "Come on, I'm starving," complained Igor impatiently.

            "Shut up," Severus said dismissively, and he absently stuffed a slice of warm bred into Igor's twisted little mouth, without taking his eyes off Rookwood. The former Ravenclaw was hesitating, standing over Lucius with his wand ready but his brow twisted as though in thought.

            "Either think of something or let me do it, then," said Severus pointedly, drawing his own wand and mulling over a few promising curses which seemed likely to be appropriate to the situation. 

            "Be quiet! I know what I'm doing," snapped Rookwood, his pleasantness and annoying grin having been momentarily shucked. And looking closer, Severus realized that the other man's eyes were shifting in a rather unnatural manner, and that his lips were contorting and whispering some sort of words—whether English or some sort of incantation or another language, it was impossible to know. Whatever Rookwood was doing, it fascinated Snape. His vision tunnelled, focused upon that oddly moving face and the absolute rigidity of his scarlet-robed body. 

            It was likely not a spell, thought Severus, since his wand was still, and silent, and not pointing at anything in particular. 

            "Come here please, Severus?" requested Rookwood very suddenly. Severus actually moved to stand up from his seated position beside the cartons and do as he was asked, when he suddenly remembered that he despised Augustus Rookwood.

            "What for?" he demanded suspiciously.

            "If you want to make a fool of Lucius Malfoy, please just get your arse over here," said Rookwood with a slight grin. Only half reluctantly, Severus stood and approached Lucius and Augustus.

            "What're you doing?" whispered Karkaroff through a mouthful of bread. He was ignored.

            "I've got a new spell all prepared," said Rookwood eagerly. Severus nodded in sudden comprehension. No wonder he had not recognised Rookwood's actions. Spellcrafting was not easy and it was, like so many extraordinary abilities, really only transferable through an incomprehensible right of birth. He had never before seen a wizard in the midst of actually creating a spell.

Spell_checking_ was easily the most common of all documented abilities, and affected most of the better wizards to a certain degree. It meant that a witch or wizard was able to (usually instinctively) tweak a spell, sometimes subtly shifting pronunciation, sometimes moving the wand in an ever so slightly different motion, and sometimes even making little adjustments on the inscrutable plane of its invisible ties into the magical energies of wizardkind on Earth. Spell_crafting_meant having the capabilities to forge the right magical connections, to find the right words, and to pick out just the right wand motion that would set everything into place for a new spell to be born. It was a less common gift than Spellchecking, but similarly, it was present to varying degrees wherever it was found. The very talented 'Crafters were good with designing spells to create momentary illusions or temporary effects; the really exceptional ones could come up with things like the Cruciatus, Imperius, and Killing curses. Like the other gifts, these had been around since ever magic existed.

Then there were thousands of rarer gifts with strange names and laughable descriptions, like the Polvova, whose touch dispelled dust from any object; or the Ritmahu, who could teach absolutely _anyone_ to do an Irish jig, if only their clothing had visible pure yellow colouring in it. Few people could name all of these gifts, but most well-educated witches and wizards could say what a metamorphmagus was able to do, and that was one of the ten least common of all the gifts. The very rarest were megametamorphmagi, who were actual shapeshifters; so uncommon that the last known megametamorphmagus had been dead by now for 300 years, and the one reliable list (kept by Merlin himself) was only able to positively identify three others from ages past. 

Of course, the heads of wizard governments everywhere snapped up the most highly gifted witches and wizards, and Britain's ministry of magic was as likely to do so as anyone else's. Unspeakables were usually highly able spellcrafters, and highly able spellcrafters were usually Unspeakables. It was a rule of thumb that rarely failed. Although through listening in on Rookwood's conversation with his superior at the ministry Severus might have realized what Rookwood could do, it was still a bit of a surprise to think that this man, who had confessed to and even demonstrated his ineptitude with the casting of spells... That _he_ might be a Spellcrafter.

"What, you mean you just thought it up right here?"  demanded Severus with sneering incredulity.

"No, I was thinking about it on the way to the Leaky Cauldron," responded Rookwood flippantly. "It's only a little spell; shouldn't last long."

"What's it do?" 

"You'll see!"

"Then what do you need me for?"  Severus asked angrily, crossing his arms.

"You're going to perform the spell," said Rookwood firmly, and added an "Ok?" which he did not really mean at all.

"I think not," said Severus immediately. 

"You have to. It'll scare Malfoy's hair right out of his scalp! I mean, it can't really get any more white, can it?"

"Go on, Snape!" urged Karkaroff, and that just about sealed the deal.

"Despite what you so obviously believe, I am _not_ that stupid," Severus huffed, crossing his arms over his chest as though warding himself from Rookwood's new curse.

"I'll tell you what it does," offered Rookwood. "It's perfect. We'll have a very nice frontal facsimile of the Dark Lord, and you can feed it thoughts and make it talk, if everything's working correctly. Now what do you say?"

"I say: even if you were trustworthy, such a silly little trick would not be worth my time," Severus said aloofly, and would hardly have admitted even to himself that seeing the look on Lucius' face would make the trouble all seem worth it. He sat down by the food and shoved an enchanted super-tasty biscuit past his thin lips.

"You are a really unlike-able person sometimes, Snape," said Rookwood coolly. He faced Lucius, once more wearing a look of intense concentration, but this time pointing his wand in the air beside Lucius as he mumbled his magic words.

Rookwood really was not a very good practical wizard. He awakened Lucius just at the moment that he'd cast the Voldemort spell to appear, but Malfoy did not die of fright. The false Voldemort was perfect, looking as menacing as the real one would have if he'd lost all of his internal organs, and if the entire back half of his body became suddenly transparent. Even the voice was just right, and Severus had to concede he was impressed by the its lovely timbre as the false Dark Lord began to belt out "Flight of the Bumblebee" as a song composed entirely of the word "la." It was certainly a startling spectacle, and Malfoy flung himself back with a satisfyingly horrified look before he paused with an expression of bewilderment to listen to the remaining minute and a half of song before the spell faded away. Then his wide eyes turned on Rookwood.

"Damn!" said Rookwood cheerfully. "I was singing that yesterday... must still be floating around somewhere in my mind. Good morning Lucius. Soup's on!"

"Do you think things are always like this?" Karkaroff asked quietly over Severus shoulder, as Malfoy exclaimed "you idiot!" and launched into a brief but furious tirade. 

Snape shrugged. "I truly hope not."

Luckily for everyone, Rookwood in particular, Lucius' initial reaction was calmed by the thought of food, and his later reaction was suspended by said food's actual consumption. Severus was slightly annoyed to see that Malfoy had already regained his aura of princely refinement and was now eating slowly and sensibly, while Severus simply gulped his helpings down. 

"You eat like a goat," Lucius informed him, disgusted.

Severus, who was really regretting Rookwood having brought Malfoy back into the equation, grunted and glared and did not amend his behaviour for even an instant. Malfoy could go to hell, Severus decided.

It was a short time later that everyone had filled their stomachs (even Karkaroff, whom Rookwood had half-heartedly fed with large pieces of dry foods), and the three unfettered Death Eaters relaxed around the room while Karkaroff slid down in his chair to as comfortable a position as he could manage. Karkaroff wished aloud that he were able loosen his belt a bit, but even Rookwood was adamant that no-one was going to  go _that_ far to assist him.

Rookwood and Malfoy kept up a steady flow of meaningless chit-chat as the dingy light out in Knockturn alley changed and began to dim with the sun's descent from the sky. Severus listened with one eye on the shadowy street, and occasionally put in a few words when the other wizards stumbled upon a topic that really interested him. It was hard to concentrate knowing the risk they would soon have to take. 

"Don't you think we should begin to prepare?" Severus blurted after a while, interrupting an exceedingly dry conversation about the involvement of Quidditch teams in world politics. 

Rookwood shrugged "I suppose. How much have you got with you, Lucius?"

"A fair amount. A couple of sips should last for at least half an hour. You propose we give it to him now?"

"Why not?" said Rookwood. "We'll wait out in the alley and return to give him some more if Borgin hasn't come yet."

"Sounds feasible," said Malfoy noncommittally, and as he rose to his feet he reached into his robe pocket and pulled out a little red flask. 

"Might I have a look?" asked Severus curiously, stretching out a hand. It would be an interesting experience to examine such a rare potion, and potions was one of his favourite areas of study. Perhaps, he thought, seeing it at least might give him some sort of inspiration.

"I'll allow it, just so long as you don't drop it," said Lucius warningly, holding out the flask in his firm grasp. He did not let go until Severus had practically pried it from his fingers, and even then kept a vigilant eye on the bottle.

"I wouldn't hurt it," said Severus softly, cradling the red glass in his palms. He touched the ceramic stopper reverently as he read the label. He didn't recognise the creator's first name, but the last name was familiar enough. Furius Dumbledore, he read. He almost _had_ to be a relative of Albus Dumbledore, current headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and wizardry. Severus had to frown at the thought of him. Capable and encouraging as Professor Dumbeldore had always been, Severus' memories of the old man were not particularly pleasant. His fearsome face on the terrible night the Potter gang had tried to kill him, the night they tried to feed him to that beast... That tainted his feelings, of course. But additionally, there was the little pang of inadequacy he felt every time he'd not lived up to Dumbledore's faith in him. 

That man believed everyone was a great wizard waiting to blossom, and after school let out, many Hogwarts alumni proved to be exactly what the headmaster had always believed them capable of becoming. Severus did not like to imagine what Dumbledore would think of his current involvement with dark magic and darker wizards, but he realized that even if given the chance to leave right now and return to his former state, he would firmly decline the offer. He wondered briefly if this Furius Dumbledore was as accepting as his relative at Hogwarts.

No, not relative, thought Severus, his attention caught by a line of tiny script at the bottom edge of the label; not a relative of Albus Dumbledore: an ancestor!

"No wonder one of your little friends was able to filch this," Severus scoffed.

"What are you saying?" demanded Malfoy.

"Did you notice the date on this flask? I'd wager my life that friend of yours must have found it on the 'to be replaced' shelf. Oh, hell..."

"I read the damned thing," Lucius snapped. "Says 'January 16-something-or-other.' What does age have to do with it? Potions can keep perfectly well for centuries after brewing."

"Yes, but that's not the date of creation, now is it?" Severus asked, pointing to the place on the label and receiving only a suspicious and confused look from Malfoy. Severus exhaled a sharp sigh. "It's the expiration date."

"Will it work at all?" Karkaroff asked, looking definitely worried.

"Well, illusion brews can be unpredictable," began Severus knowledgably, and did not miss the semi-discreet rolling of Lucius' eyes. "If the potion-brewer was very good—" and he somehow suspected that, being related to Albus Dumbledore, he was—"then it should have lasted well past 1630."

"So probably nothing to worry about, correct?" asked Rookwood uneasily.

"_Possibly_ nothing to worry about. I _told_ you, this sort of potion is rather unpredictable, without even going into the fact that an invisibility potion isn't something one would waste in foolish testing!" said Severus, feeling his ire rising now. He simply did not know what to expect, or what he or any of them were going to do if the potion failed to function properly. He pressed his thin lips into an even thinner line and thrust the flask back at Lucius. "Just go on and try it; get it over with."

"Gladly," said Lucius shortly, curling his fingers around the stopper.

"Just a moment," said Severus quickly.

"What is it?" asked Rookwood nervously.

"Malfoy, when you open it, be certain to have the stopper close at hand. The longer it's open to the air, the less likely it is that the magical essences will work correctly."

"Yes, alright," said Malfoy dismissively, his body turned towards Karkaroff but his face turning to give Severus a look of disdain. "For once, Karkaroff, I'm going to ask you to _open_ your mouth. Go on," commanded Lucius imperiously.

Karkaroff did so without complaint, and quickly Lucius unstopped the lid and raised the flask above Karkaroff's gaping mouth. His eyes squinted together in concentration as he tilted the container slowly, slowly—Severus could only hope it wasn't _too_ slowly, but he knew that Lucius was rightfully trying to conserve as much of the precious liquid as possible. Finally a single dollop of brown sludge dribbled out onto Karkaroff's waiting tongue, and Lucius righted the flask.

"Don't you dare spit that out," Lucius hissed warningly at Karkaroff's revolted expression. "Swallow it and open up, once more."

With a sickly gulp, Karkaroff forced the goop down his throat, and Severus could not help but make a face at the thought of having to choke down such a potion. If there was one drawback to the art of potionmaking, it was the fact that most potions tasted unbelievably foul. Hardly anyone bothered to add flavouring, unless the recipe was fairly simple, since it was generally not worth the risk of ruining the hard work of many months just to make it taste nice.

"Ah hake inking hohons," Karkaroff lamented with his mouth opened, and Lucius did not even bother to respond as he repeated the slow process of measuring out the dollop. Karkaroff swallowed this, too, although he looked ready to vomit.

"Isn't it working?" asked Rookwood hoarsely. His eyes were fastened intently upon Karkaroff.

"Be quiet and observe," said Severus tersely. Before there eyes, Karkaroff's form was beginning to flicker. Would it work? Severus wondered. Even if it did, he considered,  there was simply no knowing just how far its illusive properties could be trusted. 

***

Well? What do you think? I personally KNOW that I'm sort of cramming sort of a lot of overly dramatic stuff into a rather short time frame, but whatever. If this really bothers you, I can't say I'll fix it, because that would be really freakin' hard, heh heh. I can, however, say that the future holds less over-the-top crap. Less, I said less, not none! Lol. That is not to discourage you from telling me off in your review, however. I appreciate suggestions, especially with writing style. I use certain sentence patterns a lot, and if there are any grammar experts who can suggest some interesting sentence variants, I would be delighted to learn from you. And anyone who feels like it can write and tell me how I'm doing keeping everyone in character. Karkaroff comes off as so annoying and just I-really-wish he'd-get-out-of-my-face-and-shut-up-ish. Although he's a big jerk in the books, so I guess that begins to excuse it. How's my Snape doing?? Rookwood? Lucius? Were the little "gifts" and "Headmaster Dumbledore" digressions big detractors from the story? I didn't know how else to get the information out there, without inserting a chain of dialogue more conspicuously convenient than even the stuff I've done to this point. Rookwood grins an awful lot, doesn't he? Oh, well. Can't be helped. He's like that, you know. Sort of infuriating. I hope you weren't as ruffled by it as Severus was? Anyway, anyway… REVIEW!!!!! 

Additionally, thanks to Trin for being the only one to review chapter 10! Sorry, Snape's thirst for revenge is unslaked thus far. Also thanks to Queen Smuffles and Marauder1Prongs for putting me on their favorite authors lists! And Marauder1Prongs: there are more of you guys?! It's like a secret underground association of marauders, surfacing now and again to read the same fanfics... That's cool, MarauderXSo-and-sos! I swear, to all four people on whose lists I'm featured, getting on your guys' favorits author lists is almost as good as a review! Actually, ego-wise it's better, hee hee. I can't read between the lines with an unwritten honor! So... reviews, please! I won't ask you to put me under favorite authors; that seems... wrong somehow. My sense of propriety is all screwed up, but whatever. Until next time...


	12. Enter Mr Borgin

Author's Note: Spring Break, and I finally found the time to update! This chapter is just a bit longer than the previous one. I sort of like some of the wording in this chapter, although I realize that some of it is sort of awkward. But I bet you're all surprised, huh? Didn't think I planned on ever returning. Even I'm surprised; I usually get bored with things I start. But this story is, I think, a keeper. I enjoy writing it, because I've people to write it for. I suppose that's the danger of venturing into fanfiction: the instant gratification factor. It's a lot easier to write a story for which you can expect real feedback. Well, once again, I strongly urge you to review this story. And many thanks to those who managed to stumble across my story in the long stretch of time between this update and the last. I hope you like this...!  
  
*****  
  
Severus, Rookwood, and Malfoy stood in silence as Karakaroff's form began to flicker, like the shadows cast by a trembling candle flame. The Ravenous Chair's victim squirmed slightly, looking much like a figure in an old muggle moving picture, and shot a fearful look at Rookwood, who did not answer.  
  
Then Karkaroff disappeared. Not a trace of his outline or the faintest impression of a man stained the air above the ravenous chair, and only indentation of Karkaroff's rear end on the cushion allowed the observer to suspect that the three visible Death Eaters were not alone.  
  
Four breathy sighs of relief escaped at once from their respective wizards, and even Malfoy couldn't help but grin at their good fortune.  
  
"It worked, then?" asked Karkaroff with a cautious smile.  
  
"It would seem that way," Lucius smirked, his attention directed at Severus.  
  
"Oh, as though you knew it would! Can't even be bothered to read labels," grumbled Severus. "What kind of a wizard is that stupid—"  
  
"All right, we're this close to getting out of this," Rookwood indicated with his fingers held no more than a centimetre apart, "so let's not start bickering now. Karkaroff, don't move, don't talk—don't do anything, no matter what. Lucius, Severus: we're finished here, yes?" Severus inclined his head in noncommittal agreement, while Malfoy merely narrowed his eyes. "Then we'll be outside waiting for Mr. Borgin." Rookwood strode to the door and held it open for Malfoy—who sailed through it with his nose in the air—and Severus, who hesitated, reluctant to give in to Rookwood's authority completely.  
  
"Thanks for the intervention, mummy," Severus smirked, and he marched through the door with the satisfaction that he had managed to salvage at least a little dignity with that last dig.  
  
"Anything for mummy's pretty baby," Rookwood grinned, unfazed, and patted Severus roughly on the back. So much for dignity.  
  
"Er, Severus? Augustus?" Severus heard Malfoy's voice, ever so tinged with uncertainty, and redirected his attention towards its source. In front of the service desk Lucius stood rigid and falsely smiling; and behind it was an older man, looking bewildered and frightened, with eyes that darted from one Death Eater to the next.  
  
"Mr. Borgin!" cried Rookwood, advancing upon the old man who could be none other than the other shopkeeper. "We hoped you'd be here by now." It was too bad about that soundproof storeroom door, Severus thought with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach: it worked both ways. They could not have heard anyone in the main shop even if they had marched in with a brass band.  
  
"Who are all of you?" asked Borgin suspiciously, his hand reaching inside his robes for his wand. "And how did you get in?"  
  
"We let ourselves inside," Lucius lied stupidly, glancing at Severus. Malfoy was smooth, but not as smooth as Rookwood. "We're here to pick up the special order?"  
  
"I beg your pardon," said Borgin. "If you're here to rob this place, you are about to regret it!" He drew his wand and pointed it at Malfoy's face with a hand that trembled only slightly.  
  
"We are certainly not here to harm you or your merchandise," said Rookwood diplomatically, drawing Borgin's attention away from Malfoy. "Don't you remember the arrangement?"  
  
"What arrangement?" demanded Borgin, narrowing his eyes. Malfoy took the opportunity to quietly draw his wand, Severus noticed, though he held it at his side very discreetly.  
  
Rookwood sighed. "The arrangement with...the Dark Lord?" he said quietly. Borgin's eyes suddenly grew wide and fearful.  
  
"Don't know nothing about that," he said, his voice rising with every word. "I told him to stay out of that mess! Don't tell me he went and sold his soul to that devil," said Borgin, almost pleading.  
  
"You mean your partner; Burke?" asked Severus curiously.  
  
"He did, then," whispered Borgin. "That rat; how could he! I'll kill him—"  
  
Severus was hardly able to hold back a terrible giggle, at that, and from the way Lucius' mouth was twitching, he too must be having difficulties.  
  
"Malfoy, I thought you said Burke and Borgin knew about this?" said Severus accusingly, recovering nicely.  
  
"I only ever dealt with Mr. Burke! Borgin here was always away on business. I assumed he was party to the deal. And, oh, let's see; where, now, has Borgin been all day? Away on business!" Malfoy hissed.  
  
"Business," said Borgin softly, apparently too preoccupied to wonder how Malfoy knew where he'd been. "No wonder he made me go. Told me he was afraid of travelling too far from home. And this explains the odd collection he was building up in the back. He said we should 'be prepared to provide any item at a moment's notice.' I thought it seemed odd, but I never would have dreamed that you all were the real reasons. I despise being so thoroughly lied to!"  
  
"Now now, Mr. Borgin," Rookwood said, displaying a comforting smile tainted with humor. "No need to fret. This is a mutually advantageous situation. We'll take care of you, Mr. Borgin, if you take care of us—and our Master." The word "master" didn't set right in Severus's stomach. Was it only a couple of nights ago that he'd pledged his undying devotion to the snake- faced thing?  
  
"No," Borgin said with certainty. "I said I wouldn't say anything to the authorities if all of you Deadheads or somesuch would only leave us alone; but I'm telling you right now, I won't have any alliances between my perfectly—well, more-or-less—legal enterprise and your 'organization.' You gentlemen had better leave. I'll talk this over with Burke, and we'll get your order to you by tomorrow, as I, at least, am a man of my word. If you placed an order, you shall receive it. After that, I don't want to see any of you in this shop again."  
  
"Tomorrow is too late," Malfoy cut it.  
  
"How bloody unfortunate!" Borgin was visibly shaking with anger. "If you think I am going to cater to a lot of murdering bastards you are very much mistaken. Get the hell out of my shop!"  
  
"You're a mudblood, aren't you," said Severus, surprised to think that a half-breed would have the nerve to set up a dark magic shop, though he supposed the shady, "don't-ask-don't-tell" Knockturn Alley was the best place for it if one were inclined to do so.  
  
"No I am not!" Borgin cried indignantly. He lowered his wand and came around the counter to confront Severus. "I don't have to be, to know I want nothing to do with any of you and your lunacy."  
  
"So you opt not to help us?" asked Lucius in dangerously soft tones.  
  
"That's right!" snapped Borgin, turning lesiurely and pointing his wand at Malfoy once more. "You have to wait a whole day. I hope you won't die of anticipation in the long interim!"  
  
"We're flattered that you care," said Malfoy, mocking. "But there's no need to worry about us." As he spoke, he raised his left (non-wand) hand and drew a finger across his throat, as if he had a momentary itch, or as though discreetly making a "kill" gesture.  
  
Severus's stomach turned over. He had no doubt what Malfoy meant to indicate, and, strengthening his resolve, he reached into his robe pocket for his wand and withdrew it in swift silence. He wasn't sure if he was ready, and but didn't know how else to find out. And what he was sure of was that Malfoy wasn't going to accept any excuses.  
  
"Then you won't mind leaving," Borgin was hissing into Malfoy's smug face. Severus swallowed hard and raised his wand, the word "Avada" poised on his tongue, when someone—he saw immediately that it was Rookwood—grasped his wrist and halted the Killing spell before Severus could utter the first syllable.  
  
"Imperius," whispered Augustus, nodding towards Borgin, who Malfoy had goaded into arguing a moment longer. This time, Severus didn't hesitate. He was reasonably certain he could pull off the Imperius curse without a problem; it was the killing curse on which he feared to be tested.  
  
"Imperio!" cried Severus, propelling the spell at Borgin's head. It struck him hard, propelling the old man into Malfoy, who pushed him roughly to the floor.  
  
"What are you doing?!" Malfoy demanded.  
  
"What do you mean? That was an excellent move, Severus."  
  
"While it wasn't the worst choice one could have made, neither was it the best. I was trying to signify: 'kill him,' if you were watching. Not this." He poked at Borgin with the toe of his sleek black boot just as the shopkeeper was just sitting up wearing a blank expression. "We don't need this unpleasant man handling our Lord'd affairs. You heard him speaking of the 'authorities,' and you know we cannot have that."  
  
"If he were dead, then how would we have found the spell to release Karkaroff?" Rookwood mused aloud, and Severus realized he had never felt so relieved in his life, despite the pain of his returning headache.  
  
"Right," he said through gritted teeth. "Borgin, retrieve the master spell for the Ravenous Chair, if you would." Severus smiled in spite of all the effort to concentrate on Borgin's thoughts. Truthfully, he was easier to direct than Rookwood, but not to the extent that it could save him from a headache which he was already predisposed to after his adventures with Imperius earlier that same day. The blood pounded painfully through his skull.  
  
Obediently Borgin rose to his feet, and tapped his mouth twice with the tip of his wand. Then, as the three Death Eaters looked on with interest, the shopkeeper shoved a hand down his throat without hesitation. When his arm finally emerged a moment later, there was a piece of dripping wet parchment crumpled in his fist.  
  
"Brilliant," breathed Rookwood with relief. "I still say I'm glad I didn't do the full body cavity search on Burke." Severus smirked and made Mr. Borgin turn a sloppy cartwheel as a sign of Severus' own jubilation at having just escaped a very unpleasant situation. Although, Severus had to admit, handling the damp parchment, straight out of an old man's gut, was not a very appealing prospect in and of itself.  
  
"Well done," said Malfoy, with only a hint of sarcasm.  
  
Snape's smug smile widened slightly, and he muttered a drying spell in the direction of the damp sheet of parchment before ordering Borgin to bring it to him.  
  
"Come on, then," Rookwood encouraged, and with a motion of his arm led the way to the back room. This time, neither Lucius nor Severus was willing to waste any more time with protestations, and Snape willingly followed Malfoy with the Imperius-controlled shopkeeper in tow.  
  
Severus had neglected to shut the door to the storeroom before coming to Malfoy's aid in dealing with the return of Mr. Borgin, so the first sentence with which the thin air above the seat of the Ravenous Chair greeted the returning Death Eaters was, "I heard everything! Say the spell!"  
  
"Why, you're welcome, Karkaroff," said Severus acerbically, "It was no trouble at all." He glared at the place where the invisible Karkaroff's eyeballs might be.  
  
"Oh, please." Malfoy rubbed his temples. "Delay the release of that imbecile for another moment and I think I shall go mad." Severus refrained from adding that Lucius Malfoy seemed to be halfway there already.  
  
"We're begging you," Rookwood assured him, and with a sigh and a role of the eyes that belied his own eagerness to have it all over with, Severus at last went ahead and read the spell for the Ravenous Chair.  
  
Instantly the metal cuffs that supposedly encircled Karkaroff's bony and now invisible wrists and ankles sprang open, and without a sound they vanished seamlessly into the innocuous-looking woodwork of the throne.  
  
"I'm free! Free—praise Jupiter!" sang Karkaroff's voice through the empty air just in front of the chair. The dust kicked up by the scuffling dance of joy accompanied Karkaroff's relieved laughter in a circuit around the storeroom. "I was sure the Dark Lord was going to find me out!"  
  
"At least you kept faith," sighed Severus sourly. He would have smiled, as both Rookwood and Malfoy were now doing as they cordially shook hands on a job well done, but keeping control of Borgin was still something of an effort, and his head throbbed as though his skull were an egg from which a dragonling was attempting to hatch.  
  
"What's the matter now, Severus?" demanded Malfoy.  
  
"Nothing," said Severus defensively.  
  
"What, is Mr. Borgin here giving you any trouble?" Malfoy smirked.  
  
"Not in the least. I've got him well under control, if you can't tell!"  
  
"Relax, Severus!" Malfoy said, his voice more oily than Severus' scalp. "Any good Death Eater knows just how difficult it can be to perform Imperius, especially if you're a beginner in the Art."  
  
"That's right," said Rookwood, seemingly unaware of Malfoy's underlying insult.  
  
"I wouldn't know," said Karkaroff's voice. "Haven't had a chance to try it yet."  
  
"Thanks for your concern," said Severus acidly, "but I'm just anxious to get out of this nasty little hellhole of a shop and away from unpleasant company."  
  
"I think we're all ready to leave." The unpleasantly self-satisfied expression on Malfoy's face made his next words easy to anticipate. "But still something must be done with your charge, there."  
  
That he would be asked to kill the shopkeeper, Severus was certain. But whether or not he was capable of doing so, with his mind already tired with the Imperius and his fellow Death Eaters looking on with harsh judgements at the ready; of this he was uncertain. For one cold moment, Severus stared into Malfoy's glacier eyes before he spoke.  
  
"All right then. Make me do all the work, won't you," Severus said with false indignation. "I will wipe his memory myself." He lifted his wand and experimentally swished it to get the feel for the spell.  
  
"Wipe his memory!" said Malfoy with a small chuckle. "I was going to suggest killing him."  
  
"Very funny," said Severus, feeling his heart beat faster with the brazen deception he was attempting. "I'm not stupid enough to let you lead me astray. I am fully aware of what Vol—the Dark Lord would do to me if he could pin the blame on me for wreaking his business arrangements." He worked for a sardonic smile and displayed it boldly.  
  
"Touché, Severus!" said Rookwood, looking delightedly from Malfoy to Severus and back.  
  
Severus swallowed hard and tried to look smug as he brandished his wand and threw a simple memory charm at Borgin's unresponsive upright form. The spell splashed over his face in a soft wave of light, and as his eyes rolled up into his head, Severus let go of the Imperius spell he had been maintaining up till this point. It felt as though, once more, a heavy weight had been lifted, and as a consequence he was able to concentrate his full strength into what was—if he did think so himself—a nicely executed memory erasure. The last half-an-hour was neatly excised from Borgin's mind, leaving everything else perfectly intact, as far as he could tell, at least.  
  
"You know," Malfoy said at once, "That still doesn't solve the problem of the Dark Lord's business being saved."  
  
"I know that," snapped Severus. "But now all we have to do is pass ourselves off as some sort of legitimate illegal den of the dark arts, and Mr. Borgin is sure to allow us access to the Dark Lord's order."  
  
"That's a lot of bother for no certain outcome," Rookwood warned pensively.  
  
"Yes, what if he doesn't want to help us anyway?" asked Karkaroff from somewhere near Malfoy.  
  
"There's no reason to go through that at all." Rookwood looked like a child with a secret, his face alight and his mouth sealed and smilingly, just waiting for someone to ask what it was he knew.  
  
"Well?" demanded Malfoy impatiently.  
  
"Well," said Rookwood deliberately, "The Ministry of Magic, as I happen to know, teaches its Unspeakables a handy spell that allows the wizard to actually revise a memory; to put new information into the areas cleared by a memory charm. Quite ingenious; would be marvellously popular in all arenas, if the ministry were ever to release it to the public."  
  
"That is fascinating," Malfoy observed sarcastically. "If you wouldn't mind performing the spell instead of describing its most intimate details—"  
  
"I think I can handle it," Severus broke in coldly. He was not going to allow Rookwood to poke his wand into the situation and risk facing the possible necessity of killing Borgin just to make him stop singing, or some such nonsense. After only night and a day with the Death-Eater-slash- Ministry-worker, he was beginning to get an idea of the extent of Rookwood's abilities.  
  
"No problem," said Rookwood, with perhaps a touch of relief. "I'll show you how it's done, if you like."  
  
Rookwood instructed Severus in correct wand movement—a tight, spiralling pattern that Severus had most often seen in transfigurations—and once he had learnt that, Rookwood told him the spellword.  
  
"Rembertis," he annunciated clearly. "Accent on the first syllable."  
  
"Right," said Severus. "I've got it."  
  
A second later, against the backdrop of Malfoy's dramatic sighs and glances at his ancient gold pocketwatch, Severus performed the spell in earnest and was amazed at the ease with which the new memory was implanted in the shopkeeper's head. The caster had only to construct the memory in his own mind and project it into the victim's through the memory-revision charm. And though Severus' imagination was not as vivid as some, it would suffice. Better yet: the spell had a brilliant checking system in that the subject repeated his own impression of the memory at the end of the spell.  
  
"...And I have agreed to assist the 'Dark Lord' and his deputies," Borgin was just finishing as Snape prepared to end the spell, "for as long as they shall require my services."  
  
"Excellent!" said Malfoy with real enthusiasm as Borgin closed his mouth and remained standing in silence. "As much as all of this has tried my nerves, being trapped in here with you lot, I think that escaping this unpleasant predicament warrants a celebration."  
  
"That sounds alright, considering it's only a little after seven o'clock," said Rookwood. "I'll still have time for a good night's rest."  
  
"Oh, not tonight," said Malfoy immediately. "I have business that needs attending. The work of a Malfoy is never done. Things to administrate tonight; a gala at the Black estate tomorrow evening. You know how it is."  
  
"Funny; I never knew I knew," Rookwood replied, and Snape agreed with a smirk and an inclination of the head.  
  
"Yeah," giggled Karkaroff, who was beginning to reappear as a ghostlike, mostly transparent being. "I haven't been to a fancy dinner for...ever!"  
  
"Really." Malfoy looked down his nose and sniffed. "You don't know what you are missing." It was as though Malfoy were rebuilding his high-bred façade right before the eyes of the other three Death Eaters. The viciousness and nastiness, the cutting personality, were still there. But it was over- painted with a layer of class and a glaze of Old Money that he could, Severus was certain, pass off as gentlemanliness in certain exclusive social circles, or in the minds of the very stupid.  
  
"When did you have in mind, then?" asked Rookwood sourly.  
  
"Saturday after next, at Malfoy Manor, if you can make it." It wasn't quite a question, and it wasn't quite cordial, but it was an invitation to do something more interesting with one's evening than sleep, thought Snape.  
  
"Of course," said Karkaroff, elated.  
  
"Fine," Severus conceded.  
  
"I shall have to check my date book," said Rookwood, unwilling to leave off with antagonising Malfoy. "But off the top of my head, I'd say I can make it."  
  
"Excellent," said Malfoy once again, coldly this time. "Then I shall see all of you then, if not sooner."  
  
"I'd better be going, as well," said Karkarof, smiling nervously. "I want to make it out of this part of town before the invisibility wears off completely."  
  
The two remaining Death Eaters mumbled their goodbyes to Malfoy and Karkaroff as they swept and scuttled (respectively) out of the storage room, through the shop, and into the dark mystery that was Knockturn Alley.  
  
"What about Mr. Borgin, here?" Severus asked momentarily, scrutinizing the silent features of the shopkeeper.  
  
"Leave him be," said Rookwood without concern. "He'll have transformed into just another dead cockroach in a few hours."  
  
"I beg your pardon?" Severus looked at the other Death Eater sharply.  
  
"It was a good idea to wipe his memory and all of that," said Rookwood, "But to tell you that truth it simply isn't possible to rewire a wizard's brain with the spell technology we have now. I know; I'm an Unspeakable, as you might remember." He smiled sadly.  
  
"And how could I forget, with you reminding us every five minutes," Severus wanted to say, as betrayed as he suddenly felt. But he knew it was unwise for every reason he could think of so he revised his response to something more to-the-point.  
  
"What do you mean? You've had me turn him into a dead cockroach?" asked Severus incredulously.  
  
"See, the spell starts out you make the fellow talk by thinking up different things to put in his thoughts, things he'll repeat back to you," explained Rookwood. "It's a simpler version of the idea behind Imperius. Anyway: after that he just stands there for a good few hours. And he gets to take smaller and smaller breaths with every minute that passes, until he finally suffocates and falls to the ground, at which point he turns into a dead cockroach, so there's no body." Rookwood seemed very proud of this.  
  
"Why didn't you just let me kill him!" Severus demanded, appalled.  
  
"You were doing so well, going up against Malfoy like that; and I told you it was a good idea, for the most part."  
  
"What will the 'Dark Lord' do about the merchandise?" thought Severus aloud.  
  
"I don't know." Rookwood shrugged. "I suppose we'll just have to exercise more discretion in dealing with whoever becomes the new owner of Borgin and Burke's."  
  
"I've killed him, then?" asked Severus in a deadpan. He didn't feel as though he had broken any momentous barriers, and yet the fact that he was standing there, watching a man's life run out, and refusing to intervene told him he was doing something propitious in regards to his capacities as a Death Eater, and something abominable in the face of humanity, thought he couldn't see as that he owed them any favors.  
  
"It takes some getting used to," Rookwood said consolingly, clapping a hand on Severus' back. "I thought this way it might be easier."  
  
"Did you make up that spell on your own?" Severus asked suddenly, smiling slightly.  
  
"Yeah. Well; me and another bloke at the ministry. We make all sorts of things down there." He smiled, apparently reminiscing. "You know Severus; you should come to dinner with my wife and me tomorrow night."  
  
Rookwood was still young, but in the wizarding community and especially among purebloods, early marriages were not uncommon. If one found a mate with whom they believed themself either in love or at least compatible, it was best not to delay marriage and chance losing the object if affections to someone else.  
  
"I would be most interested to meet your wife," said Severus truthfully, wondering what sort of a woman someone like Rookwood would have become attached to. And besides; I've no real life to get in the way, he thought harshly.  
  
"Good," said Rookwood warmly. "We'll meet at the Chupacabra, if you know where that is. You like Mexican food alright?"  
  
"I do," agreed Severus. "I've been to that place before." Alone.  
  
"Then I'll see you tomorrow," beamed Rookwood. "I think we've got a lot in common, Severus."  
  
"Really?" Severus said noncommittally, unsure of the truth in this observation but unable to help himself from liking Rookwood at least a little. "Well; until then."  
  
"Till tomorrow," nodded Rookwood, and with an affable, pleasant smile settled on his expression, he made for the door.  
  
"I just wanted to stay and have a last look at the Dark Lord's selection of cauldrons," Snape called as Rookwood retreated into the main shop. "Think I'll stay for a bit, see if there's anything I can use in my potions, too."  
  
"The effects are irreversible, Severus," called Rookwood patiently through the open storeroom door. "No need and no reason to bother with Mr. Borgin."  
  
Severus hesitated, silent a moment, before calling in a "how-dare-you- insult-me" tone, "I hadn't planned on it!" But by this time he had heard the bells on the shop door jangle once and then fall silent. Rookwood had already gone.  
  
*****  
  
Author's Note: I hope you found that enjoyable. Once again: please review. It's great motivation, though I have no quotas and will continue to write this no matter what. I am open to stylistic and grammatical suggestions in particular, but any comments that can help me write better are welcome as much as moral-boosters. Tell me who and what you like or don't like; what or who you'd like to see more or less of; I'll see what I can do. Oh; and happy Easter to everyone who celebrates it! Ok; until next time... Thanks for reading! 


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